Direct Candidates in NRW, Social Structure and Social Network Analysis

In this contribution, the authors examine both the social structure of direct candidates from NRW and the social networks they have formed in relation to the election to the German Bundestag in order to reconstruct the position of opinion leadership on this basis. The underlying theoretical instruments use Pierre Bourdieu's assumptions with the terms habitus, field, capital and social space. Taking into account so-called epochal cohorts, the German Qualifications Framework and the analysis of the social networks of direct candidates of the six parties CDU, SPD, AfD, FDP, Left and Green, the structural characteristics and properties of the position of opinion leadership in these social networks are determined.