Academic Research

This Data Report aims to map the pathways leading to issue politicization through identifying influential users within politically contentious topics on Twitter, using the online discussion over the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. We find that politically motivated popular users are the most influential users in both CCSS and BLM online conversations.

Social media present an increasingly common path to issue politicization, as the distance between policy advocates and the masses is greatly reduced. In this Data Report, we analyze the discussions on Twitter of two issues (Black Lives Matter and Common Core State Standards) as they evolved over time. We show that politicization of the issues did not take the same path, and that different types of messages and senders were influential in expanding and shaping the discussions about the respective issues. For both issues, tweets by highly followed and verified users were widely shared, and contributed to a large downstream growth in the discussion. However, the substance of tweets mattered as well, with the use of angry language strongly correlated with measures of influence, alongside the important roles played by the use of hashtags. Finally, we find evidence that in the discussion around Common Core, some topics were far more important, including broaching issues of individual freedoms and personal values.