A structured mechanism for identifying political influencers on social media platforms : top 10 Saudi political Twitter users

Alsolami, A; Mundy, D; Hernandez Perez, M

Abstract

Social media networks, such as Twitter, offer the
perfect opportunity to either positively or negatively affect political
attitudes on large audiences. The existence of influential users who
have developed a reputation for their knowledge and experience of
specific topics is a major factor contributing to this impact.
Therefore, knowledge of the mechanisms to identify influential users
on social media is vital for understanding their effect on their
audience. The concept of the influential user is related to the concept
of opinion leaders' to indicate that ideas first flow from mass media
to opinion leaders and then to the rest of the population. Hence, the
objective of this research was to provide reliable and accurate
structural mechanisms to identify influential users, which could be
applied to different platforms, places, and subjects. Twitter was
selected as the platform of interest, and Saudi Arabia as the context
for the investigation. These were selected because Saudi Arabia has a
large number of Twitter users, some of whom are considerably active
in setting agendas and disseminating ideas. The study considered the
scientific methods that have been used to identify public opinion
leaders before, utilizing metrics software on Twitter. The key
findings propose multiple novel metrics to compare Twitter
influencers, including the number of followers, social authority and
the use of political hashtags, and four secondary filtering measures.
Thus, using ratio and percentage calculations to classify the most
influential users, Twitter accounts were filtered, analyzed and
included. The structured approach is used as a mechanism to explore
the top ten influencers on Twitter from the political domain in Saudi
Arabia.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jun 15, 2021
• Deposit Date: Jul 29, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 29, 2021
• Journal: International Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Print ISSN: 2070-3783
• Publisher: World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology
• Volume: 15
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 366-372
• Publisher URL: https://publications.waset.org/10011947/a-structured-mechanism-for-identifying-political-influencers-on-social-media-platforms-top-10-saudi-political-twitter-users
• Related Public URLs: https://publications.waset.org/
• Additional Information: Funders : Saudi Government