Policy Influence and Influencers Online and Off

Résumé

Social media is an important arena of contestation for policy actors. Yet, little research has explored the relationship between policy actors’ behaviour online and offline. In this study, we focus on actor influence, a key aspect of policy systems, by exploring four types of policy influence. We ask 1) are actors influential in policy-making central in social media networks? and 2) are they able to shape the structure of policy communication on social media? Using exponential random graph models on survey and Twitter data from the Finnish climate policy domain, we find that reputationally influential actors in offline policy-making are also central online, but the pattern does not hold for those with offline formal-institutional influence. Further, offline influence does not translate to being an online influencer; actors influential offline do not shape the structure of the Twitter network. Our results suggest that online influence is partially distinct from influence offline.

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