Social Media: The Twitter Network of Top German Economists
IW-Trends No. 2 3. August 2018 Henry Goecke / Christopher Thiele / Nils Tschampel Social Media: The Twitter Network of Top German Economists
The importance of social media is increasing rapidly, and with it their relevance as a potential communication channel for economists. On the one hand, taking the example of the microblogging service Twitter, it is possible to analyse how top German economists use social media to inform society on political and economic issues, debates and opinions. On the other hand, the network of links between the economists themselves is also of interest, as it creates a space for scientific exchange and discourse.
Henry Goecke / Christopher Thiele / Nils Tschampel German Economic Institute (IW)
The importance of social media is increasing rapidly, and with it their relevance as a potential communication channel for economists. On the one hand, taking the example of the microblogging service Twitter, it is possible to analyse how top German economists use social media to inform society on political and economic issues, debates and opinions. On the other hand, the network of links between the economists themselves is also of interest, as it creates a space for scientific exchange and discourse.
The article evaluates the pattern of links in a Twitter network based on two criteria: the number of people who follow a given economist (followers) and the number of messages forwarded to other users (retweets). This analysis of the Twitter network of top German economists, measured by both followers and retweets, shows that most of them are relatively well connected. Overall, Twitter has opened up a potential space for academic communication among economists. It also shows that a very high pro - portion of the retweets of their contributions originate from people outside the economists’ network. Germany’s top economists obviously have an influence on the socioeconomic discourse.
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