Network Analysis of Twitter Users in Iran; Studying Public Sphere Properties

Abstract

This paper aims to evaluate whether features of the public sphere are present in the activities of Iranian Twitter users. To achieve this objective, the paper provides a synthesis of computational social sciences, network analysis, and Habermas’s approach to the public sphere. The data comes from all Iranian users, including those who are actively engaged in political issues on Twitter. This method of data collection focuses on the computational aspects of the users. Added information on how they conducted networking and facilitated public opinion, which resulted in increased user interaction, would complete the data-gathering process to align with the theoretical claims. It also indicates that Twitter was a platform on which Iranian users fulfilled the requirements of the public sphere. Some of the findings indicate that there were 48,076 users connected with 25,534,713 edges, and together, they formed three communities. While one of the communities focused solely on social issues, the other two engaged in a rival political challenge. It seems that this situation exemplified the main characteristic of the public sphere, namely, the freedom to express political views and the formation of diverse communities with competing ideas.

Keywords

• habermas
• public sphere
• twitter
• public opinion
• social network analysis