Political Polarisation and Network Leaderships in the Catalan Parliamentarians Twitter Network

This article seeks to test if Twitter is opening communication flows between parties and paving the way for the appearance of network leaderships or if it is reducing them to representatives of the same party or ideology and empowering party leaders. The study is based on a dataset spanning from 1 J...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Borge, Rosa, Esteve del Valle, Marc
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2015
País:España
Institución:Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC)
Repositorio:O2, repositorio institucional de la UOC
OAI Identifier:oai:openaccess.uoc.edu:10609/93653
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10609/93653
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:parliamentarians
Twitter
polarisation
network leaderships
Catalonia
parlamentarios
polarización
liderazgos de red
Cataluña
Communication in politics
Online social networks
Comunicació en la política
Xarxes socials en línia
Comunicación en política
Redes sociales
Descripción
Sumario:This article seeks to test if Twitter is opening communication flows between parties and paving the way for the appearance of network leaderships or if it is reducing them to representatives of the same party or ideology and empowering party leaders. The study is based on a dataset spanning from 1 January 2013 to 31 March 2014 which covers all relationships (4,516), retweets (6,045) and mentions (19,507) of Catalan parliamentarians. The data sustain that the political polarisation of Catalan parliamentarians¿ Twitter flows is deeper in the relationship and retweet networks than it is in the mention and that even if party leaders are still at the centre of communication flows, other parliamentarians are taking the floor and becoming network leaders.