2022/03/17 by Arshia Arya, Arya, Arshia, Soham De +27
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection #Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC) #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Social Media and Politics #Social and Information Networks (cs.SI)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2203.09193
openalex publication_date 2022/03/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Databases of highly networked individuals have been indispensable in studying narratives and influence on social media. To support studies on Twitter in India, we present a systematically categorised database of accounts of influence on Twitter in India, identified and annotated through an iterative process of friends, networks, and self-described profile information, verified manually. We built an initial set of accounts based on the friend network of a seed set of accounts based on real-world renown in various fields, and then snowballed "friends of friends" multiple times, and rank ordered individuals based on the number of in-group connections, and overall followers. We then manually classified identified accounts under the categories of entertainment, sports, business, government, institutions, journalism, civil society accounts that have independent standing outside of social media, as well as a category of "digital first" referring to accounts that derive their primary influence from online activity. Overall, we annotated 11580 unique accounts across all categories. The database is useful studying various questions related to the role of influencers in polarisation, misinformation, extreme speech, political discourse etc.