Dissecting Twitter Elite Network

Highest degree nodes in Online Social Networks (OSNs) such as Twitter can be viewed as “social elites” or “connectivity hubs” as they are followed by many users and therefore can influence them. All these elites along with their pairwise connections form a structure that is known as the elite network. The elite network serves as the backbone of the OSN structure and thus its characteristics offer valuable insights about the core of the network. Despite their importance, the characterization of elite networks has received little attention among researchers. This paper presents a detailed analysis of the macroand micro-level structure of the Twitter elite network at different sizes. We show that the Twitter elite network has a similar “star-shaped” structure at different sizes where 90% of its nodes form the largest strongly connected component (LSCC) in the center. Furthermore, the LSCC is composed of a number of “resilient communities” that exhibit strong social cohesion. The examination of pairwise tightness between these communities reveals the coarse structure (and level of interest) among these communities. Exploring the aggregate influence of individual elites on the rest of the elite network based on three different measures, we demonstrate that each measure identifies different types of influential users.