How are digital influencers shaping the future of Europe? Who really holds the power in Brussels? On October 19th, ZN and EURACTIV organized an event exploring the impact of digital tools on European politics. ZN ranked the top EU digital influencers on Twitter.

From thousands of influencers we ranked the top-40. Please find below the individuals and their Twitter handles:

During the event, communicators, policy makers and digital influencers were brought together in a debate focused on the future of the political conversation in the EU. EURACTIV journalist Jennifer Baker and ZN’s CEO Philip Weiss moderated discussions about the power of digital #EUinfluencers. Leading influencers shared insights, tips and tactics to use social media to drive issues and change perception.

A summary of our methodology:

Step 1: Finding influencers

We used social media monitoring tools to find potential influencers focused on EU related topics, based on their biography and on the content they share. Broad queries were used as well as niche queries to identify individuals.  We used the #EUTweetUp hashtag as a first starting point and investigated who was using this hashtag and how they were connected to each other. Then various search parameters were added.

Step 2: Data consolidation

We evaluated the impact of the influencers using established criteria such as:

• Followers
• Kred (Influence increases when others retweet, @reply or follow an author. Kred Influence is on a scale of 1-1000)
• Author Reach (is the total reach of all the mentions for this author. The reach score of a tweet is calculated by summing the influence of the Author and all retweeters. E.g. if a user with an influence of 400 writes a tweet which is retweeted by a user with an influence of 500, and one with 600, the reach score of this tweet would be 1500 (400 + 500 + 600)
• Impact (shows you the potential impact of an author, site or mention. It’s a logarithmic scale between 0-100 normalized for your data to help you find what’s most interesting)
• Total Tweets (is the total number of tweets sent from that account)
• Avg retweets per tweet (Total retweets divided by the number of tweets)
• Density of followers in Brussels (the amount of followers of the influencer in Brussels divided by his or hers amount of followers)

Step 3: Criteria for inclusion – exclusion

We established criteria for inclusion and exclusion from the list.

• Brussels bubble focused
• Only individuals included, no companies and/or associations
• MEPs & Commissioners excluded
• Focus on individuals who generally tweet/post in English

Step 4: Rank digital influencers

Three main KPIs were used to create a formula – each KPI counted for an equal percentage:

• Average. retweets per tweet by others (33%)
• Density of followers in Brussels (33%)
• Number of followers in Brussels (33%)