Measuring Politicians' Activity and Influence on Twitter

• In Event: Measurement Using Online Data

Abstract

Political elites increasingly use Twitter and other social media platforms to spread their views. Yet, it is hard to come by comparative and up-to-date statistics that would tell us how active and influential politicians and parties are on these platforms. The present study first reviews how politicians' social media activity and influence have been measured in previous research and discusses the strengths and drawbacks of different approaches. Subsequently, using a suitable set of measures, our study provides a descriptive, comparative, and up-to-date overview of Twitter activity/influence across politicians, parties, and parliaments in different countries. It analyzes millions of tweets by thousands of politicians (MEPs) worldwide. Thereby, the study relies on data generated by a framework that collects the corresponding Twitter data daily, which allows for statistics that are updated on a daily basis. The identified variation in terms of activity and influence across politicians, parties, and parliaments is striking and calls for more explanation at different levels of aggregation.

Author

• Paul C. Bauer, Mannheim Centre for European Social Research