Darian Harff has published an article in Mass Communication and Society. In the paper, he examines the conceptualisation of political social media influencers (SMIs) as opinion leaders from a content analytical perspective, investigating, among other things, the extent to which they build proximity to their audience members in their political content and fulfill opinion leader functions for followers (e.g. explaining political concepts or mobilising their followers). In addition, he measures the occurrence of factual claims and opinions in political posts by SMIs, with the latter showing to be more prevalent than the former, much in accordance with the concept of opinion leadership.

• The full paper is available here:
  Harff, D. (2025). Intimate and opinion-oriented communication: Examining social media influencers’ opinion leader potential through their political content. Mass Communication and Society. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2025.2550597