{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,4,7]],"date-time":"2026-04-07T20:19:37Z","timestamp":1775593177004,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":41,"publisher":"Emerald","issue":"1","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,2,4]],"date-time":"2019-02-04T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1549238400000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.emerald.com\/insight\/site-policies"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["IMDS"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2019,2,4]]},"abstract":"<jats:sec>\n<jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Purpose<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>The purpose of this paper is to investigate political influential spreaders in Twitter at the juncture before and after the Malaysian General Election in 2013 (MGE2013) for the purpose of understanding if the political sphere within Twitter reflects the intentions, popularity and influence of political figures in the year in which Malaysia has its first \u201csocial media election.\u201d<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>\n<jats:sec>\n<jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Design\/methodology\/approach<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>A Big Data approach was used for acquiring a series of longitudinal data sets during the election period. The work differs from existing methods focusing on the general statistics of the number of followers, supporters, sentiment analysis, etc. A retweeting network has been extracted from tweets and retweets and has been mapped to a novel information flow and propagation network we developed. The authors conducted quantitative studies using <jats:italic>k<\/jats:italic>-shell decomposition, which enables the construction of a quantitative Twitter political propagation sphere where members posited at the core areas are more influential than those in the outer circles and periphery.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>\n<jats:sec>\n<jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Findings<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>The authors conducted a comparative study of the influential members of Twitter political propagation sphere on the election day and the day after. The authors found that representatives of political parties which are located at the center of the propagation network are winners of the presidential election. This may indicate that influential power within Twitter is positively related to the final election results, at least in MGE2013. Furthermore, a number of non-politicians located at the center of the propagation network also significantly influenced the election.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>\n<jats:sec>\n<jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Research limitations\/implications<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>This research is based on a large electoral campaign in a specific election period, and within a predefined nation. While the result is significant and meaningful, more case studies are needed for generalized application for identifying potential winning candidates in future social-media fueled political elections.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>\n<jats:sec>\n<jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Practical implications<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>The authors presented a simple yet effective model for identifying influential spreaders in the Twitter political sphere. The application of the authors\u2019 approach yielded the conclusion that online \u201ccoreness\u201d score has significant influence to the final offline electoral results. This presents great opportunities for applying the novel methodology in the upcoming Malaysian General Election in 2018. The discovery presented here can be used for understanding how different players of political parties engage themselves in the election game in Twitter. The approach can also be adopted as a factor of influence for offline electoral activities. The conception of a quantitative approach in electoral results greatly influenced by social media means that comparative studies could be made in future elections.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>\n<jats:sec>\n<jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Originality\/value<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>Existing works related to general elections of various nations have either bypassed or ignored the subtle links between online and offline influential propagations. The modeling of influence from social media using a longitudinal and multilayered approach is also rarely studied. This simple yet effective method provides a new perspective of practice for understanding how different players behave and mutually shape each other over time in the election game.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1108\/imds-09-2017-0409","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2018,10,3]],"date-time":"2018-10-03T06:27:54Z","timestamp":1538548074000},"page":"54-68","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":9,"title":["Influential spreaders in the political Twitter sphere of the 2013 Malaysian general election"],"prefix":"10.1108","volume":"119","author":[{"given":"Hong-liang","family":"Sun","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Eugene","family":"Ch\u2019ng","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Simon","family":"See","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"140","reference":[{"issue":"1","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref001","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"109","DOI":"10.2307\/20054149","article-title":"The public sphere and online, independent Journalism","volume":"29","year":"2006","journal-title":"Canadian Journal of Education"},{"key":"key2020092422094911500_ref002","first-page":"1","article-title":"On using Twitter to monitor political sentiment and predict election results","year":"2011"},{"issue":"10","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref003","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"P10008","DOI":"10.1088\/1742-5468\/2008\/10\/P10008","article-title":"Fast unfolding of communities in large networks","volume":"2008","year":"2008","journal-title":"Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment"},{"key":"key2020092422094911500_ref004","first-page":"411","article-title":"What\u2019s in your tweets? I know who you supported in the UK 2010 general election","year":"2012"},{"key":"key2020092422094911500_ref005","article-title":"Measuring user influence on twitter using modified k-shell decomposition","year":"2011"},{"key":"key2020092422094911500_ref008","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ch\u2019ng, E. (2014), \u201cThe value of using Big Data technology in computational social science\u201d, The 3rd ASE Big Data Science 2014 Beijing China, Beijing.","DOI":"10.1145\/2640087.2644162"},{"issue":"9","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref006","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1724","DOI":"10.1108\/IMDS-02-2015-0055","article-title":"Social Information landscapes: automated mapping of large multimodal, longitudinal social networks","volume":"115","year":"2015","journal-title":"Industrial Management & Data Systems"},{"issue":"4","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref007","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"612","DOI":"10.1108\/IMDS-11-2014-0332","article-title":"The bottom-up formation and maintenance of a Twitter community: analysis of the #FreeJahar Twitter community","volume":"115","year":"2015","journal-title":"Industrial Management and Data Systems"},{"issue":"17","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref030","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"5142","DOI":"10.1080\/00207543.2015.1066519","article-title":"Predicting consumer product demands via big data: the roles of online promotional marketing and online reviews","volume":"55","year":"2017","journal-title":"International Journal of Production Research"},{"issue":"4","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref011","first-page":"358","article-title":"Predicting online product sales via online reviews, sentiments, and promotion strategies","volume":"36","year":"2015","journal-title":"International Journal of Operations & Production Management"},{"issue":"6","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref012","first-page":"1127","article-title":"Predicting social networking sites continuance intention through alternative services","volume":"117","year":"2016","journal-title":"Industrial Management & Data Systems"},{"key":"key2020092422094911500_ref013","unstructured":"Criado, J., Ignacio, Mart\u00ednez-Fuentes, G. and Silv\u00e1n, A. (2012), \u201cSocial media for political campaigning: the use of Twitter by Spanish Mayors in 2011 local elections\u201d, in Reddick, C.G. and Aikins, S.K. (Eds), Web 2.0 Technologies and Democratic Governance, Vol. 5, Springer, New York, NY, pp. 219-232."},{"key":"key2020092422094911500_ref014","first-page":"149","article-title":"Twitter-based election prediction in the developing world","year":"2015"},{"issue":"7412","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref015","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"448","DOI":"10.1038\/488448a","article-title":"Computational social science: making the links","volume":"488","year":"2012","journal-title":"Nature"},{"issue":"41","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref016","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"17486","DOI":"10.1073\/pnas.1005962107","article-title":"Predicting consumer behavior with web search","volume":"107","year":"2010","journal-title":"Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America"},{"key":"key2020092422094911500_ref017","first-page":"251","article-title":"Dynamical classes of collective attention in Twitter","year":"2012"},{"issue":"22","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref009","first-page":"386","article-title":"Weighted modularity optimization for crisp and fuzzy community detection in large-scale networks","volume":"462","year":"2016","journal-title":"Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications"},{"key":"key2020092422094911500_ref010","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Jie, C., Zhiang, W., Junjie, W. and Hui, X. (2013), \u201cSAIL: summation-based incremental learning information-theoretic text clustering\u201d, IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, Vol. 43 No. 2, pp. 570-584.","DOI":"10.1109\/TSMCB.2012.2212430"},{"issue":"1","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref018","first-page":"1","article-title":"Twitter mood predicts the stock market","volume":"2","year":"2010","journal-title":"Journal of Computational Science"},{"issue":"11","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref019","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"888","DOI":"10.1038\/nphys1746","article-title":"Identification of influential spreaders in complex networks","volume":"6","year":"2010","journal-title":"Nature Physics"},{"key":"key2020092422094911500_ref020","article-title":"What is Twitter, a social network or a news media?","year":"2010"},{"issue":"11","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref021","first-page":"71","article-title":"The impact of social media in social and political aspects in Malaysia: an overview","volume":"3","year":"2013","journal-title":"International Journal of Humanities and Social Science"},{"key":"key2020092422094911500_ref029","unstructured":"Lim, Y. (2013), \u201cPM: GE13 will be Malaysia\u2019s 1st \u2018social media election\u2019\u201d, The Star, February 27, available at: www.thestar.com.my\/news\/nation\/2013\/02\/27\/pm-ge13-will-be-malaysias-1st-social-media-election\/"},{"issue":"11","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref022","first-page":"71","article-title":"Social media communication in organizations: the challenges of balancing openness, strategy, and management","volume":"3","year":"2013","journal-title":"International Journal of Strategic Communication"},{"issue":"6106","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref023","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"472","DOI":"10.1126\/science.1230456","article-title":"Social media and the elections","volume":"338","year":"2012","journal-title":"Science"},{"issue":"5","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref024","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"769","DOI":"10.1108\/IMDS-03-2015-0075","article-title":"Social media models, technologies, and applications","volume":"115","year":"2015","journal-title":"Industrial Management & Data Systems"},{"key":"key2020092422094911500_ref025","article-title":"Predicting the future with social media","year":"2010"},{"issue":"8","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref026","first-page":"108","article-title":"A fast community detection method in bipartite networks by distance dynamics","volume":"496","year":"2018","journal-title":"Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications"},{"key":"key2020092422094911500_ref028","first-page":"178","article-title":"Predicting elections with Twitter: what 140 characters reveal about political sentiment","year":"2010"},{"issue":"8","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref027","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2158","DOI":"10.1109\/TKDE.2016.2553667","article-title":"Quantifying political leaning from tweets, retweets, and retweeters","volume":"28","year":"2016","journal-title":"IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering"},{"key":"key2020092422094911500_ref031","article-title":"Divided they Tweet: the network structure of political microbloggers and discussion topics","year":"2011"},{"key":"key2020092422094911500_ref044","article-title":"Twitter free Iran: an evaluation of Twitter\u2019s role in public diplomacy and information operations in Iran\u2019s 2009 election crisis","year":"2009"},{"issue":"1","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref032","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"6","DOI":"10.1140\/epjds6","article-title":"Partisan asymmetries in online political activity","volume":"1","year":"2012","journal-title":"EPJ Data Science"},{"key":"key2020092422094911500_ref033","article-title":"Limits of electoral predictions Using Twitter","year":"2011"},{"issue":"5915","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref034","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"721","DOI":"10.1126\/science.1167742","article-title":"Computational social science","volume":"323","year":"2009","journal-title":"Science"},{"key":"key2020092422094911500_ref035","article-title":"The value of using Big Data technology in computational social science","year":"2014"},{"issue":"1","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref036","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"95","DOI":"10.1177\/1326365X14539213","article-title":"Social media impact on Malaysia\u2019s 13th general election","volume":"24","year":"2014","journal-title":"Asia Pacific Media Educator"},{"issue":"13","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref037","first-page":"26","article-title":"Microblogging meets politics: the influence of communication in 140 characters on Romanian presidential elections in 2009","volume":"3","year":"2011","journal-title":"Revista Rom\u00e2n\u0103 de Comunicare \u015fi Rela\u0163ii Publice"},{"issue":"11","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref038","first-page":"71","article-title":"The impact of social media in social and political aspects in Malaysia: an overview","volume":"3","year":"2013","journal-title":"International Journal of Humanities and Social Science"},{"issue":"6","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref039","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"521","DOI":"10.1080\/00358533.2013.857146","article-title":"How to win a lost election: malapportionment and Malaysia\u2019s 2013 general election","volume":"102","year":"2013","journal-title":"The Round Table"},{"issue":"8","key":"key2020092422094911500_ref040","first-page":"1750112","article-title":"An improved game-theoretic approach to uncover overlapping communities","volume":"28","year":"2017","journal-title":"International Journal of Modern Physics C"}],"container-title":["Industrial Management &amp; Data Systems"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.emerald.com\/insight\/content\/doi\/10.1108\/IMDS-09-2017-0409\/full\/xml","content-type":"application\/xml","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"text-mining"},{"URL":"https:\/\/www.emerald.com\/insight\/content\/doi\/10.1108\/IMDS-09-2017-0409\/full\/html","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,7,24]],"date-time":"2025-07-24T21:53:26Z","timestamp":1753394006000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"http:\/\/www.emerald.com\/imds\/article\/119\/1\/54-68\/185367"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2019,2,4]]},"references-count":41,"journal-issue":{"issue":"1","published-print":{"date-parts":[[2019,2,4]]}},"alternative-id":["10.1108\/IMDS-09-2017-0409"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1108\/imds-09-2017-0409","relation":{},"ISSN":["0263-5577"],"issn-type":[{"value":"0263-5577","type":"print"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2019,2,4]]}}}