Database of Indian Social Media Influencers on Twitter

Databases of highly networked individuals have been indispensable in studying narratives and influence on social media. To support studies on Twitter in India, we present a systematically categorized database of accounts of influence on Twitter in India, identified and annotated through an iterative process of friends, networks, and self-described profile information, verified manually. We built an initial set of accounts based on the friend network of a seed set of accounts based on real-world renown in various fields, and then snowballed ``friends of friends" multiple times, and rank ordered individuals based on the number of in-group connections, and overall followers. We then manually classified identified accounts under the categories of entertainment, sports, business, government, institutions, journalism, civil society accounts that have independent standing outside of social media, as well as a category of ``digital first" referring to accounts that derive their primary influence from online activity. Overall, we annotated 11580 unique accounts across all categories. The database is useful studying various questions related to the role of influencers in polarisation, misinformation, extreme speech, political discourse etc.高度网络化个体数据库在社交媒体叙事与影响力研究中不可或缺。为支持印度地区Twitter平台相关研究，我们构建了一套经系统分类的印度Twitter影响力账号数据库：该数据库通过迭代分析好友关系、网络结构及用户自描述个人资料信息完成账号识别与标注，并经人工核验。我们首先以多领域现实知名账号构成的种子集的好友网络为基础，构建初始账号集，随后多次对“好友的好友”进行滚雪球式扩展，并依据群组内连接数与总粉丝数对个体进行排序。经人工分类，我们将识别出的账号划分为娱乐、体育、商业、政府、机构、新闻、公民社会（拥有社交媒体外独立地位）等类别，同时增设“数字原生”（digital first）类别，指代其核心影响力来源于线上活动的账号。最终，我们完成了全类别下共11580个唯一账号的标注工作。本数据库可用于研究与影响力者在舆论极化、虚假信息传播、极端言论、政治话语等议题中所扮演角色相关的各类问题。