Super‐amplifiers! The role of Twitter extended party networks in political elections

Yoon, Nara; Hemsley, Jeff; Smith, Alexander O.; Simpson, Ellen; Eakins, James

doi:10.1002/poi3.295

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 55 publications

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“…There are other types of bots that we have not explored within this discourse that exists in social media. Such bots include amplifier bots which have been shown to intensify opinions in political discussions [80,81]. Another is spam bots which have been observed to spread phishing links on Twitter [82] and overwhelm Twitter users with messages spreading their own ideology [83].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deflating the Chinese balloon: types of Twitter bots in US-China balloon incident

Ng,

Carley

2023

EPJ Data Sci.

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As digitalization increases, countries employ digital diplomacy, harnessing digital resources to project their desired image. Digital diplomacy also encompasses the interactivity of digital platforms, providing a trove of public opinion that diplomatic agents can collect. Social media bots actively participate in political events through influencing political communication and purporting coordinated narratives to influence human behavior. This article provides a methodology towards identifying three types of bots: General Bots, News Bots and Bridging Bots, then further identify these classes of bots on Twitter during a diplomatic incident involving the United States and China. In the balloon incident that occurred in early 2023, where a balloon believed to have originated from China is spotted across the US airspace. Both countries have differing opinions on the function and eventual handling of the balloon. Using a series of computational methods, this article examines the impact of bots on the topics disseminated, the influence and the use of information maneuvers of bots within the social communication network. Among others, our results observe that all three types of bots are present across the two countries; bots geotagged to the US are generally concerned with the balloon location while those geotagged to China discussed topics related to escalating tensions; and perform different extent of positive narrative and network information maneuvers. The broader implications of our work towards policy making is the systematic identification of the type of bot users and their properties across country lines, enabling the evaluation of how automated agents are being deployed to disseminate narratives and the nature of narratives propagated, and therefore reflects the image that the country is being projected as on social media; as well as the perception of political issues by social media users.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deflating the Chinese balloon: types of Twitter bots in US-China balloon incident

Ng,

Carley

2023

EPJ Data Sci.

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“…Less attention has been given to influential actors' capacity to also shape how other users view and behave toward one another (Shmargad, 2022), which is especially pertinent in the highly networked information environment of social media. As gaining visibility through retweets is a more fitting indicator of a user's online influence than, for example, large follower counts (Cha et al., 2010; Romero et al., 2011; Vaccari & Valeriani, 2015; Yoon et al., 2022), we deem those who possess the ability to shape online debate by way of increasing the broadcasting influence of other actors to be influential in the online setting.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Policy influence and influencers online and off

Kotkaniemi,

Ylä‐Anttila,

Chen

2024

Policy Studies Journal

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Social media is an important arena for policy contestation. Although online social media debates can yield notable power over political processes offline, little research has examined the relationship between policy actors' influence in offline policymaking and social media policy arenas. We explore the relationship between four types of influence: reputational and formal‐institutional influence offline, and broadcasting and boosting influence online. We ask (1) are influential policy actors better able than others to broadcast their own messages on social media? and (2) are they better able than others to boost the broadcasting influence of other policy actors in social media? Using exponential random graph models on survey and Twitter data from the Finnish climate policy domain, we find that actors with high reputational influence in offline policymaking are also influential online, when measuring influence as the ability to broadcast one's own message. The pattern does not hold for those with formal‐institutional influence offline. Additionally, offline influence does not translate to the ability to further shape online influence by making boosting other actors' visibility. Our results suggest that although online influence partially corresponds to influence in policymaking, influence varies across arenas of policy contestation.

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“…What accounts constitute the initiators and amplifiers during Chinese political events? Additionally, rather than providing original content, amplifiers are actively engaged users who function as hubs to filter and share content and opinions of others (Pintak et al, 2022;Yoon et al, 2022). Thus, identifying those users whose content spurs amplification would help us understand the information sources of amplifiers in political events.…”

Section: Discussing Chinese Politics On Twittermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Like opinion leaders, they shape online conversations primarily through enlarging the attention paid to a given account or message as well as diffusing information in online networks. Scholars have termed them as “super-amplifiers” (Yoon et al, 2022), “gatekeepers” (Hemsley, 2019), and “disseminators” (Nip & Fu, 2016). Amplifiers operate in several ways.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Dynamics of Event-Based Political Influencers on Twitter: A Longitudinal Analysis of Influential Accounts During Chinese Political Events

Liang

2023

Social Media + Society

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The study examines the dynamics and multiplicity of political influencers on Twitter by focusing on the discussion of six China-related political events between 2017 and 2020. We consider influence as communication practices aimed to shape the flow of online information, and political influencers as a small number of users who can disproportionately advance certain topics and direct audience attention. Our analysis of English and Chinese data ( N = 2,349,852) shows that political influencers engage in political events through two roles: initiators and amplifiers. While existing institutions such as news outlets are initiators who originate political information, individuals, trolls, and bots flood social media to share information provided by other users. Moreover, the results suggest that political influencers are largely event-dependent in the way that few accounts remain influential across different events, times, and language contexts. These findings advance our understanding of political influencers from a dynamic perspective.

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Super‐amplifiers! The role of Twitter extended party networks in political elections

Cited by 10 publications

References 55 publications

Deflating the Chinese balloon: types of Twitter bots in US-China balloon incident

Deflating the Chinese balloon: types of Twitter bots in US-China balloon incident

Policy influence and influencers online and off

The Dynamics of Event-Based Political Influencers on Twitter: A Longitudinal Analysis of Influential Accounts During Chinese Political Events

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