A relatively small group of highly connected individuals on various social media platforms plays an outsized role in deepening political polarization. These so-called social media elites not only shape conversations but also coordinate positions across numerous issues, while also receiving broad implications from the general users to significantly influence and strengthen ideological clustering. These are the critical findings in an investigation led by network scientist and computer science professor Mikko Kivelä of Aalto University in Finland.
Elite Networks and the Architecture of Modern Political Polarization on Social Media: Key Insights From a Finnish Study
A small group of online users is reshaping political debate, driving polarization, and creating ideologically rigid camps. They are called social media elites. Their influence amplifies divisions and leaves mass users and institutions struggling to find common ground.
Identifying and Defining Elites in Social Media
Traditional measures of polarization often treat society as homogeneous and ignore who drives the divide. Specific political Polarization on social media platforms also lacked detailed scientific inquiries.
Political polarization is a growing concern in different societies across the world. The role of social media in public discourse has been acknowledged in previous studies. However, while polarization has been studied for a while, its structural roots on social media or the composition of individuals who drive it and how much they do so were less clear.
The three-member team of Kivelä developed a particular network‐theory method to measure how many individuals on social media platforms contribute to political polarization in society. Note that this method is a scientific approach used to explore and understand how things are connected and how those connections shape population behavior.
Moreover, in the aforementioned approach, individuals or groups are represented as nodes, and the relationships and interactions between these nodes are represented as edges. Nevertheless, by examining patterns within these connections, researchers can understand how information spreads, how groups form, and how influence flows through a system.
The particular investigation of Kivelä and his team involved collecting 12 weeks of X or Twitter data leading up to each of the 2019 and 2023 parliamentary elections in Finland. This also entailed looking for and focusing on several polarizing sociopolitical topics in the Finnish online landscape. These were climate, immigration, economy, social, and education.
Both core-periphery theory and community detection algorithms were then used to divide social media users into an elite group and a mass group. These elites do not necessarily mean politicians. The algorithm identified them based on network structure or the degree or level of their centrality, influence, and connection in the social media platform.
The researchers also developed a method to decompose polarization into components contributed by elites and the masses. They separated elites from mass users based on follower counts and public prominence, then measured structural polarization, elite cohesion, cross-group bridges, and issue alignment across multiple policy-focused discussion networks.
Role of Social Media Elites in Polarization
Within these digital arenas, a small number of highly visible accounts act as central hubs, shaping discourse and influencing how ordinary users engage, forming the structural backbone of ideological divisions.
The aforesaid approach not only revealed several structural forces shaping polarization but also showed that elites exert a disproportionate influence relative to their small size. The researchers also identified mechanisms that strengthen ideological clustering and amplify elite narratives across large online populations. Below are the specific findings:
• Disproportionate Elite Impact
The elites accounted for a much larger share of measured political polarization than their small population size suggested. Their endorsements and positions strongly shaped the structure of political conversations across multiple topics.
• High Elite Cohesion
Elite social media users were tightly connected to one another to form dense clusters that allowed them to coordinate messaging and reinforce consistent ideological positions far more effectively than ordinary social media users.
• Mass Amplification of Elite Messages
Large numbers of mass users repeatedly endorsed elite content, giving elites an expanded reach that magnified their influence further and helped embed their positions deeply within topic-specific platform groups or communities.
• Strong Cross-Issue Alignment
Elites displayed highly synchronized positions across diverse policy issues to create unified ideological camps that pushed polarization beyond single topics and contributed to broader and more entrenched ideological divisions.
• Declining Bridge Interactions
Connections between opposing groups, which often reduce polarization, weakened over time, thereby allowing elite cohesion and mass amplification to exert an even stronger polarizing effect in several major issue networks.
Understanding the Implications of Elite Influence
The investigation reveals how social media architecture allows a few voices to shape sociopolitical discourses online. Elite cohesion, alignment, and amplification create persistent polarization.
Remember that these social media elites are not necessarily politicians or celebrities. They are structural elites or users who are central in the network, densely interconnected, and receive a lot of attention or engagement from others. These elites are small and distributed across both the right-leaning and left-leaning sides of the political spectrum.
Some examples of these elites are influencers, thought-leaders, and other highly active users who are structurally embedded in the core because many people engage with them. Popular celebrities and politicians with an active social media presence are also elites. But elite membership can vary by topic or network because the classification is structural and dynamic.
Nevertheless, because these social media elites are few but structurally powerful, they serve as opinion leaders or cue-givers whose views heavily shape how polarization evolves on social media platforms. Their cohesive structure means they can mobilize and amplify their own narratives, making it easier for their ideas to spread and dominate discourse.
High alignment across issues makes their influence more stable and more dangerous. When these elites are unanimously aligned on many policies, they set the agenda, and mass users have little alternative framing. Their influence contributes not only to disagreement but also to entrenchment since they drive deeply structural and cross-cutting political polarization.
The role of online elites increases the risk of false information and propaganda spreading across social media. They can amplify misleading content, reinforce echo chambers, and reduce exposure to alternative views. This dynamic undermines informed public debate, erodes trust in institutions, and threatens democratic decision-making by shaping opinions.
FURTHER READING AND REFERENCE
- Salloum, A., Chen, T. H. Y., and Kivelä, M. 2025. “Anatomy of Elite and Mass Polarization in Social Networks.” Network Science. 13. DOI: 1017/nws.2025.10010