Vol. 10 No. 1 (2021)
Original Research Article

Masters of Wine on Twitter: presence, activity, impact and community structure

Enrique Orduña-Malea
Universitat Politècnica de València, Department of Audiovisual Communication, Documentation and History of Art.
Cristina I. Font-Julian
Universitat Politècnica de València, Department of Audiovisual Communication, Documentation and History of Art.
José Antonio Ontalba-Ruipérez
Universitat Politècnica de València, Department of Audiovisual Communication, Documentation and History of Art.
Raúl Compés-López
Universitat Politècnica de València, Department of Economy and Social Sciences

Published 2021-04-14

Keywords

  • wine,
  • wine industry,
  • wine experts,
  • social media,
  • Twitter,
  • Informetrics
  • ...More
    Less

How to Cite

Orduña-Malea, E., Font-Julian, C. I., Ontalba-Ruipérez, J. A., & Compés-López, R. (2021). Masters of Wine on Twitter: presence, activity, impact and community structure. Wine Economics and Policy, 10(1), 73–88. https://doi.org/10.36253/wep-9055

Funding data

Abstract

Globalisation, the Internet and social media have changed the kind of actors with influence in the wine industry and the way these actors create signals to communicate credible information about experience and trust attributes. Among the most prestigious experts in the world of wine are the Masters of Wine (MW). Although initially devoted to international trade, they have spread their activities and their opinion is more and more appreciated by producers and consumers. The main objective of this article is to determine this community of experts’ behaviour on Twitter. In order to do so, four factors (presence, activity, impact and community) have been considered. All Twitter profiles belonging to users awarded with the MW qualification were identified and analysed. In addition, a set of 35,653 tweets published by the MWs were retrieved and analysed through descriptive statistics. The results show MWs on Twitter as high attractors (number of followers), moderate publishers (original contents published), moderate influencers (number of likes and retweets), and low interactors (number of friends and mentions to other users). These findings reveal that the MW community is not using Twitter to gain or reinforce their reputation as an accredited expert in the wine industry, giving more influential space on Twitter to consumers and amateurs.

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