TY - JOUR
T1 - Who Did the Top Media From Spain Started Following on Twitter? An Exploratory Data Analysis Case Study
AU - Israel-Turim, Verónica
AU - Micó-Sanz, Josep Lluís
AU - Ordeix-Rigo, Enric
N1 - Funding Information:
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The authors have received financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry, and Competitiveness, for this research as part of the project “Influencers in Political Communication in Spain. Analysis of the Relationships Between Opinion Leaders 2.0, Media, Parties, Institutions, and Audiences in the Digital Environment (R + D + Project). CSO2017-88620-PF.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 SAGE Publications.
PY - 2021/3
Y1 - 2021/3
N2 - The digital sphere and social media platforms have prompted new logics regarding information access and influence flows among media, politicians, and citizens. In this exploratory study, via a machine learning software and with data visualization methods, we analyzed social media data in order to find patterns that can contribute to comprehend the new dynamics of influence between the media, politicians, and citizenship in the context of social media and digital communication, specifically on Twitter. We analyzed who the top 50 Spanish generalist media with most followers started following in 2017, 2018, and 2019 on Twitter, the quintessential informational network. To do so, we melded data visualization computational and manual methods. We used an artificial intelligence big data analysis software to visualize the network of media from Spain in order to identify the sample. Afterward, we extracted the top followed accounts by the sample and categorized them in types of accounts, institution/citizenship, country, number of followers, and gender, to proceed with the data visualization to identify trends and patterns. The results show that these media accounts started following mainly accounts that belonged to male politicians from Spain. We could also spot among the years of the study an inversely proportional trend from the media that went from following mainly institutions to following a majority of citizens, and to start following more accounts with a smaller number of followers every year. The tendency to follow accounts from Spain that belong to men grew or remained a majority among the years of the study.
AB - The digital sphere and social media platforms have prompted new logics regarding information access and influence flows among media, politicians, and citizens. In this exploratory study, via a machine learning software and with data visualization methods, we analyzed social media data in order to find patterns that can contribute to comprehend the new dynamics of influence between the media, politicians, and citizenship in the context of social media and digital communication, specifically on Twitter. We analyzed who the top 50 Spanish generalist media with most followers started following in 2017, 2018, and 2019 on Twitter, the quintessential informational network. To do so, we melded data visualization computational and manual methods. We used an artificial intelligence big data analysis software to visualize the network of media from Spain in order to identify the sample. Afterward, we extracted the top followed accounts by the sample and categorized them in types of accounts, institution/citizenship, country, number of followers, and gender, to proceed with the data visualization to identify trends and patterns. The results show that these media accounts started following mainly accounts that belonged to male politicians from Spain. We could also spot among the years of the study an inversely proportional trend from the media that went from following mainly institutions to following a majority of citizens, and to start following more accounts with a smaller number of followers every year. The tendency to follow accounts from Spain that belong to men grew or remained a majority among the years of the study.
KW - Twitter
KW - citizenship
KW - media
KW - media trends
KW - politicians
KW - social media
KW - social media data analysis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85100483058&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/0002764220979784
DO - 10.1177/0002764220979784
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85100483058
SN - 0002-7642
VL - 65
SP - 512
EP - 539
JO - American Behavioral Scientist
JF - American Behavioral Scientist
IS - 3
ER -