Replication Data for: Assessing media balance through elite social media networks

Impartiality and balance are important concepts in broadcast journalism where, in many parts of the world, news coverage by public service broadcasters (PSB) is expected to remain politically neutral. However, objective measures of political balance can be difficult to operationalise. This article proposes a novel technique for assessing the political representation of broadcasters by estimating the ideological position
of the guests they select to appear on their political programmes using their social media networks. In a case study of the United Kingdom (UK), a nation with a long and proud tradition of public broadcasting, left-right ideological estimates are derived from the Twitter/X follow networks of guests who appeared on the flagship political programmes of its six major broadcasters. These estimates are formally validated
through a survey of the general British public (R2 = 0.61). Assessing guest selection across seven political programmes between 2022 and 2024, results would indicate that each show demonstrated a degree of imbalance towards the right of the political spectrum. The purpose of this research is to highlight the value of using social media networks to better understand elite representation in politics and the media.