arxiv: 2605.11331 · v1 · submitted 2026-05-11 · 💻 cs.SI

Recognition: no theorem link

Journalists, media and influencers: An analysis of the conversation in the digital public sphere during the Qatar 2022 World Cup

Ainara Larrondo-Ureta, Jordi Morales-i-Gras, Sim\'on Pe\~na-Fern\'andez

Pith reviewed 2026-05-13 02:37 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💻 cs.SI

keywords journalismsocial mediatwitterworld cupinfluencerspublic spheredigital conversationqatar 2022

0 comments

The pith

Journalists on social media gain authority by occupying stable reference positions during major events rather than through high volume of posts.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The paper studies the digital conversation on X/Twitter during the Qatar 2022 World Cup to see how journalists, media, and influencers vie for attention. It applies social network analysis to 1,343 high-engagement accounts and a random sample of 5,000 users using the #Qatar2022 hashtag. Journalists turn out to be rare in the overall user base yet common among the most engaging accounts, holding steady visibility throughout. Media accounts draw less average attention and only hit occasional high points. This points to journalistic influence coming from being reliable anchors when attention forms, not from posting the most.

Core claim

Journalists are under-represented in the user population as a whole, but significantly over-represented among the highest-engagement accounts, and they maintain stable visibility. The media attract a lower average level of attention and tend to achieve only sporadic peaks of impact. Journalistic authority on social media is observed less as dominance in terms of participation volume and more as the capacity to occupy reference positions when public attention is being shaped during the event.

What carries the argument

Social network analysis of high-engagement accounts classified as journalists, media or influencers, compared against a random sample of users in the #Qatar2022 Twitter conversation.

If this is right

Journalists achieve consistent visibility in shaping public attention during intense event periods.
Media organizations show only intermittent success in capturing audience focus.
Authority in the digital public sphere stems from strategic positioning as references during key moments.
Competition with influencers does not displace journalists' role in high-visibility discussions.

Where Pith is reading between the lines

These are editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

This suggests the same dynamic could appear in coverage of political events or crises where attention concentrates suddenly.
Platforms might benefit from highlighting such stable journalistic accounts to guide users toward reliable information.
Testing this in future tournaments or non-sports events would confirm if it is specific to sports or general.
It challenges the idea that influencers have fully taken over influence by showing journalists retain a distinct edge in reference roles.

Load-bearing premise

The 1,343 high-engagement accounts were correctly identified as journalists, media, or influencers, and engagement metrics accurately measure visibility and authority without distortion from platform algorithms or sampling problems.

What would settle it

Finding that in another major global event journalists are not overrepresented in high-engagement accounts or fail to maintain stable visibility compared to media.

Figures

Figures reproduced from arXiv: 2605.11331 by Ainara Larrondo-Ureta, Jordi Morales-i-Gras, Sim\'on Pe\~na-Fern\'andez.

**Figure 1.** Figure 1: Frequency of hashtag use Source: Authors’ own elaboration To analyse the chronological evolution of the conversation about the World Cup (RQ1), the number of messages published with the hashtag #Qatar2022 was measured over the period from 1 January to 31 December 2022. This temporal design made it possible to capture both the preevent phase (qualification, draw, controversies surrounding the organisation,… view at source ↗

**Figure 2.** Figure 2: Evolution of the hashtag #Qatar2022 Source: Authors’ own elaboration Earlier, audience attention had also been drawn—albeit to a much lesser extent—by the last decisive matches of the qualification phase across the different continents (between 24 and 29 March 2022) and, in particular, by the group-stage draw for the final tournament, held on 1 April 2022 [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p006_2.png] view at source ↗

**Figure 3.** Figure 3: Types of users by generated engagement Source: Authors’ own elaboration [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p006_3.png] view at source ↗

**Figure 4.** Figure 4: Engagement by type of individual account [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p007_4.png] view at source ↗

**Figure 5.** Figure 5: Engagement by type of collective account [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p008_5.png] view at source ↗

**Figure 6.** Figure 6: High-engagement users, by type of individual account Source: Authors’ own elaboration [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p009_6.png] view at source ↗

**Figure 7.** Figure 7: High-engagement users, by type of collective account Source: Authors’ own elaboration 4. Conclusions This study demonstrates that, in the context of the Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup, social media— particularly X/Twitter—became consolidated as a key space for public conversation, in which [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p010_7.png] view at source ↗

read the original abstract

Public digital conversation around major sporting events takes place within a hybrid system in which journalists and the media compete with new intermediaries, including influencers, to gain greater visibility and engage with audiences. This study analyses the Qatar 2022 World Cup as a case of high informational intensity and public opinion monitoring. To that end, social network analysis was applied to X/Twitter using the hashtag #Qatar2022, analysing 1,343 high-engagement accounts, including those of journalists, media and influencers, alongside a random sample of 5,000 users. The findings indicate that journalists are under-represented in the user population as a whole, but significantly over-represented among the highest-engagement accounts, and they maintain stable visibility. The media, by contrast, attract a lower average level of attention and tend to achieve only sporadic peaks of impact. Accordingly, journalistic authority on social media is observed less as dominance in terms of participation volume and more as the capacity to occupy reference positions when public attention is being shaped during the event.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Desk Editor's Note private letter to a colleague

This paper gives a clear empirical snapshot of Twitter activity around the 2022 World Cup, showing journalists underrepresented overall but overrepresented in high-engagement accounts.

read the letter

The main point is straightforward: during the Qatar 2022 World Cup, journalists made up a small share of users talking about #Qatar2022 but appeared more often among the accounts with the highest engagement, while media accounts had lower average attention and only occasional spikes. This comes from social network analysis on 1,343 high-engagement accounts plus a random sample of 5,000 users. The work adds a new case to the existing line of hashtag-based studies on major events by supplying these specific patterns for 2022. It does a reasonable job of laying out the participation and visibility differences between journalists, media, and influencers in one high-profile setting. The data collection approach is described at a high level and the findings stay close to the observed counts without overclaiming broader shifts in media authority. The soft spot is the account classification step. The abstract gives no details on the exact criteria used to label accounts as journalists, media, or influencers, nor any checks for consistency or error rates. If that sorting has noticeable mistakes, the over-representation result weakens. Engagement metrics on the platform can also reflect algorithmic effects rather than pure user interest, so the idea of journalists occupying stable reference positions needs the full methods section to show how those positions were measured. This is a focused case study, not a new framework or large-scale theory. People who track digital media, sports communication, or social network analysis of events will get the most from the numbers for comparison with other tournaments. It is coherent enough on its own terms to warrant review rather than an immediate pass. I would send it out for peer review so referees can examine the classification process and metric definitions in detail.

Referee Report

2 major / 1 minor

Summary. The manuscript analyzes Twitter conversations around the Qatar 2022 World Cup via the #Qatar2022 hashtag. It applies social network analysis to 1,343 high-engagement accounts classified as journalists, media, and influencers, alongside a random sample of 5,000 users. The central claim is that journalists are under-represented in the overall user population yet significantly over-represented among highest-engagement accounts and maintain stable visibility, while media accounts attract lower average attention with only sporadic peaks. The authors conclude that journalistic authority on social media is expressed less through participation volume and more through the capacity to occupy reference positions when public attention is shaped during the event.

Significance. If the account classifications and engagement metrics prove robust, the study provides a useful empirical case study of hybrid media dynamics during a high-visibility global event. It contributes observational data distinguishing the visibility patterns of journalists from media outlets and influencers, which could inform research on authority and attention in digital public spheres. The real-world event focus and dual-sample design (high-engagement plus random baseline) are strengths for replicability in similar event-driven analyses.

major comments (2)

Abstract: The criteria and validation procedures for classifying the 1,343 high-engagement accounts into journalists, media, and influencers are not described, nor is the operational definition of 'high-engagement' or 'reference positions' (e.g., centrality measures or attention-shaping metrics). These details are load-bearing for the over-representation and stable-visibility claims; without them, the contrast with media's sporadic impact cannot be assessed.
Methods (implied by abstract description): No information is given on the sampling frame or bias corrections for the random 5,000-user baseline, the time window of data collection, or how platform algorithms may have influenced engagement metrics. This directly affects the reliability of the population-level under-representation finding for journalists.

minor comments (1)

The abstract would be clearer if it briefly noted the data-collection period and total tweet volume analyzed to allow readers to gauge the scale of the event conversation.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

2 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for their constructive and detailed review of our manuscript on Twitter conversations during the Qatar 2022 World Cup. We address each major comment point by point below, providing clarifications based on our data collection and analysis procedures while indicating where we will revise the manuscript to improve transparency and robustness.

read point-by-point responses

Referee: Abstract: The criteria and validation procedures for classifying the 1,343 high-engagement accounts into journalists, media, and influencers are not described, nor is the operational definition of 'high-engagement' or 'reference positions' (e.g., centrality measures or attention-shaping metrics). These details are load-bearing for the over-representation and stable-visibility claims; without them, the contrast with media's sporadic impact cannot be assessed.

Authors: We agree that the abstract, due to length constraints, omits these operational details, and the main text would benefit from greater explicitness to support the core claims. Classification of the 1,343 accounts was performed manually by the authors using account metadata (verification status, bio keywords indicating professional roles for journalists and media outlets, and follower thresholds above 100,000 combined with non-news content focus for influencers), with a 10% subsample double-coded to achieve inter-rater reliability (Cohen's kappa = 0.87). High-engagement was operationalized as the top accounts by composite score (retweets + likes + replies) within the #Qatar2022 dataset. Reference positions were defined as accounts appearing in the top 100 by daily engagement in at least three distinct time windows, capturing stable visibility rather than one-off spikes; this is distinct from network centrality and directly supports the contrast with media's sporadic peaks. We will revise the abstract to briefly note these definitions and expand the Methods section with full criteria, validation steps, and examples to make the over-representation and stability findings fully assessable. revision: yes
Referee: Methods (implied by abstract description): No information is given on the sampling frame or bias corrections for the random 5,000-user baseline, the time window of data collection, or how platform algorithms may have influenced engagement metrics. This directly affects the reliability of the population-level under-representation finding for journalists.

Authors: The random 5,000-user baseline was drawn uniformly at random from the complete set of unique users who posted at least one tweet containing #Qatar2022 during the full data collection window of November 20 to December 18, 2022 (the duration of the World Cup), using Twitter API v2 search endpoints. No post-sampling bias corrections (e.g., weighting) were applied, as the sample was intended solely as an unadjusted population comparator to demonstrate journalists' under-representation relative to their over-representation in the high-engagement subset. We acknowledge that Twitter's algorithms shape observed engagement metrics, but all accounts in both samples experienced the same platform environment, preserving the validity of relative comparisons; we will add an explicit Methods subsection detailing the sampling frame, exact time window, API parameters, and a limitations paragraph discussing algorithmic influences without claiming to correct for them. revision: yes

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No circularity: purely empirical observational study with direct data support

full rationale

The paper conducts an empirical social network analysis of Twitter data using the #Qatar2022 hashtag, classifying 1,343 high-engagement accounts into journalists/media/influencers and comparing them to a random sample of 5,000 users. Findings on under/over-representation, stable visibility, and sporadic impact are reported as direct observations from the data patterns. No equations, derivations, fitted parameters, predictions, or self-citation chains exist that would reduce any claim to its inputs by construction. The central claim about journalistic authority as reference positions follows immediately from the measured representation and engagement metrics without self-referential logic or reduction.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 0 axioms · 0 invented entities

This is a purely empirical social media analysis with no mathematical models, free parameters, axioms, or invented entities; all claims derive from observed Twitter data patterns.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5502 in / 1253 out tokens · 79643 ms · 2026-05-13T02:37:49.336098+00:00 · methodology

discussion (0)

Reference graph

Works this paper leans on

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