Whose voice is being heard or not? Explore opinion leaders within the social media community

My abstract is part of the panel titled ""The Greater Regard for Whole Community: Leveraging Community Resources and Social Capital for Emergency Preparedness and Response" and accepted by the National Communication Association 110th (2024) Convention. Abstract: Social media has grown into a large community with two-way communication and engagement. This study highlights the importance and potential strengths of studying social-mediated public opinions with mixed methodologies. Specifically, this study explored how to use social network analysis to identify opinion leaders (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955) who emerged on social media. It further proposes to utilize discourse analysis to understand diverse stakeholders’ perspectives. Integrating big data and discourse analysis can offer broad and in-depth insights into the following questions: Who are the opinion leaders on social media? How do we identify opinion leaders? What attitudes do the opinion leaders hold? How do social media opinion leaders impact information dissemination? What perspectives do diverse stakeholders express on social media? This study will add more knowledge of mapping the influential opinion leaders and understanding the diverse perspectives of public opinions. It will also offer implications for building an online community. Keywords: social media, opinion leaders, social network analysis, big data, discourse analysis

Overview