Shifting Polarization and Twitter News Influencers between two U.S. Presidential Elections

TL;DR

This study examines how polarization and influential Twitter users shifted between the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections, revealing increased polarization and changes in influencer composition.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of the evolution of political influence and polarization on Twitter across two major U.S. elections, highlighting the changing landscape of influencers.

Findings

Increased polarization among influencers and their audiences from 2016 to 2020.

Most top influencers remained media-affiliated, but new influential groups emerged.

75% of top influencers in 2020 were new compared to 2016.

Abstract

Social media are decentralized, interactive, and transformative, empowering users to produce and spread information to influence others. This has changed the dynamics of political communication that were previously dominated by traditional corporate news media. Having hundreds of millions of tweets collected over the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections gave us a unique opportunity to measure the change in polarization and the diffusion of political information. We analyze the diffusion of political information among Twitter users and investigate the change of polarization between these elections and how this change affected the composition and polarization of influencers and their retweeters. We identify "influencers" by their ability to spread information and classify them into those affiliated with a media organization, a political organization, or unaffiliated. Most of the top influencers were affiliated with media organizations during both elections. We found a clear increase from 2016 to 2020 in polarization among influencers and among those whom they influence. Moreover, 75% of the top influencers in 2020 were not present in 2016, demonstrating that such status is difficult to retain. Between 2016 and 2020, 10% of influencers affiliated with media were replaced by center- or right-orientated influencers affiliated with political organizations and unaffiliated influencers.