Tweeting the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris (COP21): An analysis of a social network and factors determining the network influence

To understand the Twitter network of an environmental and political event and to extend the network theory of social capital, we first performed a network analysis of the English tweets during the first 10 days of the United Nations’ Conference of the Parties in Paris in 2015. Accounts for nonprofit and government agencies were more likely to be influential in the Twitter network and be retweeted, whereas individual accounts were more likely to retweet others. Based on a quota sample of 133 Twitter accounts and using both manual and machine coding, we further found that the number of followers (but not the size of following) and the common-goal frame (i.e., mitigation/adaptation) positively predicted an account's influence in the Twitter network, whereas the conflict frame negatively predicted an account's network influence.