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

Abstract

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