The role of hyperactive Twitter accounts in the diffusion of political information

Abstract

Social media virality is intertwined with content’s ability to trigger specific reactions; however, little is known regarding the behavioural component of political information diffusion. This study uses big data to investigate the significance of hyperactive social media use in the retransmission of information produced by political opinion leaders on Twitter during Poland’s 2019 European parliamentary election campaign. Using the isolation forest method, the research identified the social bot-like (semi)automated or human-controlled Twitter handles which are referred to as hyperactive accounts. The study finds that the hyperactive accounts produced almost all reactions in our sample (N = 114,036), but their average activity was relatively moderate and did not exceed human capabilities. Although their retweets equal 0.46% of the retweets obtained by political opinion leaders, the random forest regression models suggest that the likes and retweets from hyperactive accounts are the most important determinants of the dissemination of political opinion leaders’ tweets. The results draw attention to the alarming phenomenon of the further increase in Twitter’s interactional asymmetry.

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