How Influencers and Multipliers Drive Polarization and Issue Alignment on Twitter/X

TL;DR

This study analyzes how influencers and multipliers on Twitter/X contribute to political polarization and issue alignment in Germany by examining trending topics and user opinions over two years.

Contribution

It reveals the roles of influencers and multipliers in driving ideological content and polarization, highlighting social media-specific mechanisms affecting online public opinion.

Findings

Online public sphere is divided into left- and right-leaning camps.

Political issues show strong ideological alignment, contrary to survey expectations.

Multipliers act as intermediaries, amplifying ideologically charged content.

Abstract

We investigate the polarization of the German Twittersphere by extracting the main issues discussed and the signaled opinions of users towards those issues based on (re)tweets concerning trending topics. The dataset covers daily trending topics from March 2021 to July 2023. At the opinion level, we show that the online public sphere is largely divided into two camps, one consisting mainly of left-leaning, and another of right-leaning accounts. Further we observe that political issues are strongly aligned, contrary to what one may expect from surveys. This alignment is driven by two cores of strongly active users: influencers, who generate ideologically charged content, and multipliers, who facilitate the spread of this content. The latter are specific to social media and play a crucial role as intermediaries on the platform by curating and amplifying very specific types of content that match their ideological position, resulting in the overall observation of a strongly polarized public sphere. These results contribute to a better understanding of the mechanisms that shape online public opinion, and have implications for the regulation of platforms.