Followers are opinion leaders: The role of people in the flow of political communication on and beyond social networking sites

Abstract

One of the defining characteristics of the increasingly essential social networking sites is the network structure of the new medium. Opinion leaders are essential for the flow of communication in networks and consequently should be crucial for the flow of communication on social networking sites. Hence, to assess the political role and impact of social networking sites in electoral politics, we must find out more about the followers of parties and politicians. The aim of this article is therefore to investigate to what extent opinion leaders are more likely than others to follow parties and politicians on Facebook and whether opinion leaders are especially active in their online and offline networks, using a unique national representative web survey with more than 5700 respondents. The findings show that followers of parties and politicians on Facebook to a great extent are opinion leaders and that these opinion leaders are especially active in online and offline networks. This increases the significance of social networking sites and increases the role of opinion leaders in the flow of political communication in the society.