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Copyright of Kepes is the property of Universidad de Caldas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Opinion leader research (OLR) has been widely used in public health to identify influential persons or organizations to affect health care practice, inform policy-making processes, and help shape communication strategies. We used OLR to gather information related to barriers and possible solutions to guide strategic engagement for strengthening policy making for improved maternal, infant, and young child nutrition (MIYCN) practices in 5 Southeast Asian countries—Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Timor-Leste, and Thailand. In most countries, MIYCN policies and policymaker interest exist, but effective implementation and/or enforcement of current policies is weak. This article aims to share our experience in and lessons learned from using OLR as an advocacy tool: It helped identify opinion leaders with interest and influence to affect nutrition-related policies, it raised opinion leaders' interest in MIYCN, and it identified themes that would help generate political priority setting. Based on our experience, we recommend OLR as a strategic activity for informing and generating support for MIYCN policy-making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the echo chamber phenomenon and opinion leadership on Twitter based on the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Network analysis and 'big data' analytics were employed to analyze more than 50 million tweets about the two presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, during the election cycle. Overall, the results suggested that Twitter communities discussing Trump and Clinton differed significantly in the level of political homogeneity and opinion leadership, and that certain opinion leaders were responsible of creating homogeneous communities on Twitter. This study made a theoretical contribution to the literature by linking opinion leadership and Twitter's network structure and shedding light on what may have caused the echo chamber problem to happen in an emerging media landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opinion leaders play essential roles in online social media and are the key to analyzing the process of information diffusion. While the crowdfunding market has exhibited rapid growth, empirical studies about social media opinion leaders in the crowdfunding context remain nascent. Specifically, efforts to identify opinion leaders in social media and to understand the mechanisms by which such opinion leaders influence others in the crowdfunding context are limited. Based on the information diffusion theory, this study aims to address these research gaps by applying a multiple-case research design combined with dynamic network analysis (DNA). By analyzing user-generated content related to selected case projects from Weibo, the most popular micro-blogging site in China, the study identifies five types of social media opinion leaders. In addition, it investigates the various roles of opinion leaders in the information diffusion process on social media. Theoretically, this study broadens the boundaries of the "two-step flow" model and the diffusion of innovations theory by applying them to the crowdfunding context. The findings of this study provide valuable insights on crowdfunding project promotion for both crowdfunding platform operators and project initiators. • This study investigated online opinion leaders in the crowdfunding context. • The text mining technique is conducted to recognize opinion leaders from user generated content (UGC) from social media. • The multiple-case design and Dynamic Network Analysis (DNA) are applied in this study. • Five different kinds of opinion leaders are revealed. • This study provides valuable insights for better understand crowdfunding practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of rumors and denigration in cyberbullying have been studied in the contexts of public opinion and public policy, but questions remain. The study presented here examines the association of rumors and denigration with cyberbullying during the COVID-19 pandemic and provides a sentiment evolution and social network map of cyberbullying features at different stages of an episode. This study applied latent dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modeling, sentiment analysis and semantic network analysis to analyze three Chinese cases where rumors and denigration triggered cyberbullying, with 7691 comments. The authors found that cyberbullying caused by rumors and denigration often started with the release of fake information, and core topics and sentiment values varied between stages of the cyberbullying episode. Collective moral disengagement theory suggests collective behavior may reduce moral self-control, generating online interactive behaviors that enhance the spread of rumors and denigration. Spiral of silence theory also offers perspectives on cyberbullying, which are considered in this study. While the cases in this study occurred within the context of COVID-19, cyberbullying via rumor and denigration may occur in many scenarios, so the current paper will interest multiple audiences. The findings of this study suggest that researchers and decision-makers could helpfully design programs to supervise public opinion, raise awareness of cyberbullying and avoid secondary harms. • Spiral of silence theory offered new perspectives, which is the anti-spiral of silence, on cyberbullying, with such minority opinions sometimes prompting large-scale discussions. • The core topics and sentiment values differed at various stages of the cyberbullying episode, and drawing from collective moral disengagement theory, collective behavior may reduce moral self-control, generating online interactive behaviors that can enhance rumors and denigration spreading. • Cyberbullying can be deployed via 'neutral' or even 'polite' language – but cyberbullying communications presented in this way are deliberately repeated in an attempt to harm or exert pressure on the target. • For online service providers, policymakers, and educators, this goal of this study is to provide mechanisms that enables decision-makers to shape technology management, information management and legal from a comprehensive and development perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twitter has been chosen by lot of companies as social network site to create brand communities. Although consumers can write opinions about the brand in many websites, the development of brand communities enhances this word of mouth and allows consumers to spread the word about the brand in the brand community context. Some opinion leaders could be part of the brand community. Thus, companies can enhance positive word of mouth toward the brand by identifying these opinion leaders. However, the company needs to know whether the opinion leader is loyal to the brand in order to avoid negative word of mouth. Twitter offers information about community members that can be useful to identify these opinion leaders. This study analyzes both, the answers to an online questionnaire and the Twitter profile of 265 followers of three camera brands on Twitter. The results show that analyzing the information written by members in their Twitter profile, how many followers they have and how many people or brands they follow is key to identify loyal opinion leaders in brand communities developed in Twitter. Loyal opinion leaders have many followers; however, they do not follow many accounts in this social network site.

Because of digitization and internet development that took place in the 21st century, fashion industry has been consistently encountering various challenges. While the popularity of social media continues to grow, a new player in fashion industry, along with the medium they control, has emerged – the fashion blogger and the fashion blog. After gaining millions of followers on social media, bloggers acquired a certain power position – they can influence the opinion of their audience. With the popularity of social media, fashion bloggers, who gain a certain position of power through the acquisition of large numbers of followers across social networks, can shape their followers’ opinions, present a variety of fashion product reviews, and participate in the consumer decision-making processes. For fashion companies, collaborations with bloggers are becoming more relevant and an increasing part of a fashion brand marketing strategy. This article introduces theoretical and empirical research that was carried out to analyze and explore the role of fashion bloggers in modern fashion marketing communication. Fashion companies seek to exploit this advantage for commercial purposes and include blogs as advertising channels into their marketing strategy. This article aims to analyze the role of blogs in the modern fashion industry. In order to reach that, the following objectives were set: to research the attributes of the fashion industry and fashion marketing in the 21st century; to analyze the definition, features, types, and significance of fashion blogs with reference to the current fashion industry; to examine the aspects of connection forming between fashion blogger and its audience; to explore the features of Lithuania’s fashion bloggers’ activities and the strategies they use to develop their ties with significant target audiences of the fashion sector. In order to reach the aim of research, two empirical research methods were combined: semi-structured interviews with fashion bloggers and a questionnaire for the followers of fashion blogs. During the study it was established that the role of Lithuania’s fashion blogs is best seen in fashion marketing – blogs are the mediators between fashion companies and consumers. They form a personal bond with consumers and organically disseminate fashion trends to a wide audience.

Using a random sample of posts on Weibo, this study content analyzes the extent to which Weibo opinion leaders' tweets are associated with the shifts and variations of public opinion--in terms of topic salience, emotional reactions, agent of responsibility, motivation for condemnation, rhetorical techniques, conviction of blame, and emotional intensity--in the case of the Tianjin Explosion. Building upon a burgeoning research agenda examining the role of Chinese Weibo in the context of two-step flow, this study found that opinion leaders generally reinforce Weibo users' subjective assessment (e.g., attitudes and emotional responses) of the incident. An overwhelming sleeper effect is also observed in that most posts by the opinion leaders did not contribute to peaks until 2-3 days later. All opinion leaders achieved between one and three peaks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Kurdish Studies is the property of International Journal of Kurdish Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

For over 70 years the use of opinion leaders in a two-step communication process has been employed and validated. However, despite the accepted importance of communicating with opinion leaders as a means to cascade information to opinion leaders' networks of influence there have been few empirical studies specifically examining agricultural and natural resource opinion leader communication channel preferences, particularly from an audience segmentation perspective. The results reported in the study capitalize on previous research data examined from a unique perspective. Specifically, communication channel preferences were analyzed according to opinion leader self-reported demographic categories serving as audience segments. Associations between sex, age, level of employment, level of education and geographical region and communication channel preference were analyzed. The results of the study are descriptive and foundational in nature. Overall, the results indicate a dedicated web page or blog is the most preferred communication channel across all audience segments and conference calls are the least preferred communication channel across the majority of audience segments. The Facebook group communication channel had the most variability between audience segments and the LinkedIn group communicational channel had the largest observed effect sizes among audience segments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ileti-s-im is the property of Universite Galatasaray, Faculty of Communication and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Highlights • Classify the opinion leader not only in the global community but in the local community also. • A Meta heuristic approach has proposed to find the opinion leader. • An improved and modified method is proposed for community identification in the social network. • The overall complexity of both the proposed algorithm is lesser than previously other developed algorithm. Abstract Nowadays, with the widespread access to web 2.0, the social network plays an unbelievable role in knowledge sharing and diffusion of new products. People can share their views and can visit other's opinion about the particular material, news, products, artifacts and, trends, etc. anywhere, anytime, and anywhere. An Opinion leader is a critical person who can change, modify and transform other's view by their knowledge and proficiency. In this article, an innovative approach is proposed to discover the top-N local and global opinion leader within the community and social network respectively. Initially, we identified the community structure within the social network using the modified Louvain method and next identified the opinion leader using a modified firefly algorithm in each community. We also determined the global opinion leader within the same social network using the same firefly algorithm. The proposed approach is exceptionally supportive to expert and intelligent system because it competently discovered the local optimum concurrently in each subgroup of the social network. All the users can update its attractiveness value without any supposition, and as soon as the distance among the user's increases, the other users can automatically create another subgroup in the network and form the local community. In addition, as the population size in the network increases, the entire users measure their prominence simultaneously. Therefore, there is no consequence on computational time and accuracy of the algorithm. Thus, the proposed algorithm is superlative suitable for discovering the opinion leader in the local community and globally in the social network. For legalized the proposed approach, we implemented our proposed method on synthesized as well as on real dataset. Finally, we concluded that both the recommended procedures are much better concerning the accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score with the widely used standard Social Network Analysis (SNA) measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]