Examining the impacts of key influencers on community development

Abstract

In this research, we aim to identify and investigate the impacts of key influencers on community formations and developments. We assess the impacts of key influencers by analyzing the activities and structure of the social media presence of a local community. Results of our analysis show that key influencers play important roles in connecting the community, transferring information, and improving overall sentiment of the community members. Our findings suggest that community practitioners can apply social network analysis to identify value-added influencers and discover strategies for improving the community and keeping leadership roles.