Measuring Network Structure Metrics as a Proxy for Socio-political Activity in Social Media

Social surveys have been used by researchers and policy makers as an essential tool for understanding social and political activities in society. Social media has introduced a new way of capturing data from large numbers of people. Unlike surveys, social media deliver data more rapidly and cheaply. In this paper, we aim to rapidly identify socio-political activity in South Africa using proxy data from social media. We measure and analyse scalar properties of a network created by user interactions on Twitter. Our experimental results show that network diameter and reciprocity have statistical significance in determining socio-political activity.