Exploring the disparity of influence between users in the discussion of Brexit on Twitter

Amirarsalan Rajabi,Ivan Garibay,Kuldip Singh Atwal,Alexander V Mantzaris

doi:10.1007/s42001-021-00112-0

Amirarsalan Rajabi, Ivan Garibay + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s42001-021-00112-0

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Abstract

The topic of political polarization has received increased attention for valid reasons. Given that an increased amount of the social exchange for opinions happens online, social media platforms provide a good source of information to investigate various aspects of the phenomena. In this work, data collected from Twitter are used to examine polarization surrounding the topic of the Brexit referendum on the membership of the European Union. The analysis specifically focuses on the question of how different tiers of users in terms of influence can project their opinions and if the polarized conditions affect the relative balance in the broadcast capabilities of the tiers. The results show that during polarization periods, users of the higher tier have increased capabilities to broadcast their information in relation to the lower tiers thereby further dominating the discussion. This validates previous modeling investigations and the hypothesis that polarization provides an opportunity for influencers to increase their relative social capital.

Highlights

Societal dialogue has been a corner stone for democracies and its use in building bridges between groups in education is long standing [36]
The work of [16] provides a model for how this effect can be produced in a stochastic message exchange model and this work here uses data from Twitter to support the hypothesis that polarization provides an opportunity for social media influencers to gain social capital in the process
It was hypothesized in previous work that the events can offer an opportunity for influencers to regain relative broadcast rankings which are diluted during non-polarized exchanges

Summary

Introduction

Societal dialogue has been a corner stone for democracies and its use in building bridges between groups in education is long standing [36]. There has been an increased amount of attention in the academic community investigating the issue of polarization since it can affect the results of the democratic process and jeopardize its longterm stability [8] This is not a new concern as it has been raised in the works of [2, 13, 18, 21, 38, 39] which spans a period from the 80s to this current year. The insightful work of [21] provides a more detailed understanding of the placements of the identities formed out of the stance for those voting on this matter It reinforces, by reminder, the concept of how a democracy requires mutual respect and a “willingness to talk across political divides”. The results provide evidence for the increased role that influencers have during polarized discussions, and subsequently how the lower tiers of users have diminished broadcasting roles

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