Exploring Network Structure and Information Diffusion Pattern of Twitter- The Jan Lokpal Movement Case

Online social media has become an indispensable part of internet users’ day to day activities. Online social media such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. empower the common people to share their opinions with others. In recent past, Twitter helped to facilitate spreading of social movements like Egypt revolution (2011), Jan Lokpal movement in India and so on. The Jan Lokpal Bill, is an anti-corruption bill initiated by the social activists of India to appoint an independent body – Jan Lokpal, aims to form effective anti-corruption and grievance redressal system so that effective restraint can be formed against corruption and to provide effective protection to whistleblowers. These social movements stem from the fact that when an incident is getting public attention or a topic is becoming a trend in a social network like twitter, users start to share information from other users and connect to other users and gradually form an information sharing network. The network may expand and reshape overtime. The structure of the network and the pattern it follows is associated with the users’ behavior of sharing information and connecting to each other. We analyze the content and structure of Twitter network shaped for spreading news about the Jan Lokpal movement in India. This study helps us to explore the particular structural and contextual characteristics of the information sharing network which facilitates the information diffusion in the Jan Lokpal movement Twitter network