Social Media as Political Network: A Social Network Analysis Approach to Immigration Debates on Twitter

This research aims to investigate the dynamics of political communication in online social networks. Social media constitutes an integral part of the spread of information in contemporary societies. Consequently, digital social platforms are crucial for political parties and movements to spread their message. Gaining insights into these social networks is crucial because, on the one hand, they have the potential to boost political efficacy and participation; on the other hand, they may create echo chambers and polarising outcomes and are instrumental in the spread of disinformation or conspiracy theories. Accordingly, the consequences of these technologies are significant due to their impact on the future of democracies. In short, the goal of this project has significant implications for academic research, governmental policy formation, and public debates. The central research case will be based on the H2020 OPPORTUNITIES project Twitter data on immigration debates. A social network analysis (SNA) method will be applied to the support networks of political leaders and parties in four different countries: Italy, Germany, Austria, and Hungary. The extensive tweet data will be used to model the networks in Gephi based on a number of criteria (such as follows, retweets, replies) and variables (such as ideological orientation, national context, hashtags) in order to disclose the patterns and disparities. Moreover, a variety of network analysis algorithms will be applied to identify the forms, clusters (communities), key nodes, and other network metrics. Subsequently, it is planned to extend the research by 1) applying sentiment analysis to the tweet data, 2) incorporating other platforms into SNA for comparison, 3) focusing further on various political conditions (liberal vs. authoritarian) to investigate their effects, and 4) studying other controversial online political debates to detect any affinities.