Who are Dominant Communicators on Twitter? A Study of Korean Twitter Users

Abstract

This study explores how Twitter users perceive their socio-communication attitudes as well as those who users follow. From the theoretical perspective of communication styles in interpersonal communication, this study focuses on the positions and roles of users and their partners in Twitter conversations by conducting a survey and a content analysis. The results demonstrate that the respondents tended to perceive their communication attitudes to be more passive on Twitter than in the real world. In addition, they tended to perceive that their most trusted followees were more likely to show dominant communication attitudes than they did. These results indicate that ordinary users are more likely to play a role as listeners than as speakers on Twitter while entrusting several trusted users with the role of a dominant communicator and that their perception of their own and their followees’ communication styles tends to influence their actual behavior on Twitter.