Social Media Public Opinion as Flocks in a Murmuration: Conceptualizing and Measuring Opinion Expression on Social Media

Abstract We propose a new way of imagining and measuring opinions emerging from social media. As people tend to connect with like-minded others express in response current events on media, media public opinion is naturally occurring, temporally sensitive, inherently social. Our framework for first samples targeted nodes large graph identifies homogeneous, interactive, stable networks actors, which we call “flocks,” based network structure, then measures presents flocks. apply this Twitter provide empirical evidence flocks being meaningful units analysis flock membership predicting expression. Through contextualizing by foregrounding the various homogeneous it embedded in, highlight need go beyond aggregate-level measurement study dynamics expression using