Malaysian Politicians’ Connection Pattern on Twitter using SNA: A Case of Najib Razak

Najib Razak is one of the most prominent politicians in Malaysia whose popularity has risen worldwide over the years due to his political sharp-witted strategy and various political scandals. He is also identified as one of the most followed Malaysian politicians on social media, especially Twitter. Hence, this study aims to apply Social Network Analysis (SNA) to further examine the interactions between Twitter users and the relationship formed with Najib Razak. A complete network of Najib Razak’s Twitter account is used to study the connection pattern, influence, and groups developed between account users in the network. Netlytic is used to extract the data on Twitter, and based on the extracted dataset, it is discovered that 1004 nodes that represent Twitter users, follows and mentions the @najibrazak Twitter account. The dataset was further analyzed using R to explore the interaction and the connection patterns were visualized using Gephi. Based on the findings, the connectivity, centrality and clustering of the top 10 most influential Twitter users that contribute to the discussion and mention of Najib Razak on Twitter were determined. The previous work using Najib Razak’s twitter account focused on finding the relations between public and politicians by analyzing the issues discussed through language processing at topical and lexical level. Unlike the previous achievement, the results from this proposed SNA technique can be further analyzed to gather greater insights on the hidden relationship built between politicians to strengthen their position and distinguish their possible future followers for further investigations.