Influencers in Confinement : Measuring Covid-19’s Impact on Leadership in Pro- Eating Disorder Twitter Communities

Sammanfattning: The Covid-19 pandemic presented unprecedented challenges, with global lockdowns impacting individuals on a profound scale. Many took to social media to cope with feelings of anxiety and isolation. Lockdown conditions and social media carry with them particular challenges, triggers and temptations for those with eating disorders, namely in the form of online communities promoting eating disorders and disordered behaviors as a legitimate lifestyle choice. This study examines pro-eating disorder Twitter communities before, during and after the initial Covid-19 lockdown (Mid-March to May 2020) to examine the influence of confinement on leadership dynamics and content trends. Utilizing data obtained through Twitter’s Academic API, I constructed monthly retweet network time-slices spanning from November 2019 to September 2020. Through social network analysis and analyzing turnover rates of top users, the evolution of influential users was assessed to test whether the circumstances created by Covid-19 restrictions would disrupt the established leadership paradigm or the period would maintain stable leadership based on expectations proposed by the literature of preferential attachment in scale-free networks. Contrary to expectations, influential users exhibited high turnover throughout the period and the network showed no tendency towards preferential attachment or any scale-free behavior in degree distributions. The high rate of leader turnover further increased in May and a higher proportion of new users achieved the highest number of in-degree ties into the latter months, but this hint at a cohort shift did not align with covid lockdown as predicted, instead occurring at the end of lockdown and continuing until the end of the studied period. Ultimately, users’ mostly fleeting popularity was largely based on the current content interests of the group rather than the individual user’s network position. The increase in activity predicted to co-occur with covid restrictions did not materialize until the summer months, therefore cannot be definitively linked to lockdown. The fluctuations in topic popularity detected in the topic model suggest a possible seasonal component to the rhythms of this community that requires further research. This exclusive longitudinal analysis of retweet networks as they were affected by covid-19 lockdown conditions challenges previous research on influence in social networks and online communities with findings of more dynamic leadership. Understanding the influence dynamics of this community can inform efforts to combat the spread of potentially harmful content and provide valuable insights for eating disorder specialists navigating the influences that may affecting their patients.