Political Polarisation and Network Leaderships in the Catalan Parliamentarians’ Twitter Network

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Rosa Borge Bravo
UOC
Marc Esteve Del Valle
Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)

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.


Keywords
parliamentarians, Twitter, polarisation, network leaderships, Catalonia

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How to Cite
Borge Bravo, Rosa; and Esteve Del Valle, Marc. “Political Polarisation and Network Leaderships in the Catalan Parliamentarians’ Twitter Network”. IDP. Internet, Law and Politics E-Journal, no. 20, doi:10.7238/idp.v0i20.2641.
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Author Biographies

Rosa Borge Bravo, UOC

Resident researcher at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute and Associate Professor of Political Science at the Open University of Catalonia

Marc Esteve Del Valle, Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)

Researcher and PhD grant-holder of the Doctoral Programme in Information and Knowledge Society at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (Open University of Catalonia)