Assessing Influence on Social Media: Reputation Risks in Networks

Assessing influence on social media is at the heart of a new trend in social media studies. Our paper is about assessing users' influence on social networks. We do it in the context of reputational risks. While getting additional followers may provide insight of an increasing popularity, it does not necessarily translate into a more influential position. Four metrics are studied in our paper: (1) the number of followers, (2) the number of messages sent by a unique user, (3) the number of different users who have retweeted them and (4) the betweenness centrality. Our results suggest that the number of followers is an indication of what is considered to be influential, but no one can differentiate himself by following this kind of users. The number of messages sheds light on what can be described as noisy users. The third construct gives access to a more refined reputation value, which is based on the number of different users retweeting a message. From social network analysis, the last method provides privileged information to anyone following these users. These new methods of assessing influence on Twitter leverage the management of reputation risk for firms in a social media era.