Opinion Holder

Anita Ciunova-Shuleska, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, North Macedonia
anita@eccf.ukim.edu.mk

Nikolina Palamidovska-Sterjadovska, Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, North Macedonia
nikolina@eccf.ukim.edu.mk

An opinion holder is an entity that holds an opinion about a specific topic, subject, or situation (opinion object). An opinion holder can be a person, organisation, country, or some other specific group of people expressing an opinion. The opinion could be expressed implicitly or explicitly, and when expressed explicitly, opinion holders of the propositional opinions are usually observed as agents of those opinions. Opinion holders are also called opinion sources; and they are usually explicitly mentioned in news, articles, or other formal documents; but in user-generated content such as posts, blogs, or reviews, they are the authors whose true identities may be unknown. Regarding how often opinion holders communicate about a specific topic, we can differentiate ‘inactive’ as those who do not seek out or receive advice from others on a specific topic; ‘followers’ as those whom opinion leaders influence; ‘opinion leaders’ who lead the formation of attitudes, public knowledge, and opinions; and ‘mediatized opinion leaders’, individuals who considerably use media for communicative exchange and information. In addition, regarding the level of opinion leadership and knowledge about a specific topic, four types of opinion holders are identified: ‘informed opinion leaders’ (both high opinion leadership and knowledge), ‘uniformed opinion leaders’ (average knowledge but high level of opinion leadership), ‘silent experts’ (high knowledge and low opinion leadership) and ‘other’ persons that possess little knowledge and leadership about a specific topic. In this line, it is valuable to mention the term ‘opinionators’ referring to individuals whose profession revolves around creating, disseminating, and interpreting ideas, values, and opinions in society, such as academics, journalists, artists, community activists, etc.

Keywords: opinion holder, opinionators, types of opinion holders

Related Entries: Opinion Object

References:
Kim, S. M., & Hovy, E. (2006). Extracting opinions, opinion holders, and topics expressed in online news media text. Proceedings of the Workshop on Sentiment and Subjectivity in Text (pp. 1-8). https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.5555/1654641.1654642
Saunders, P. (2006). The rise of the opinionators. Policy, 22(2), 3-13. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/aeipt.164933
Schäfer, M. S., & Taddicken, M. (2015). Mediatized opinion leaders: New patterns of opinion leadership in new media environments? International Journal of Communication, 9, 960-981. https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-114938
Seth, A., & Seth, K. (2019). Fundamentals of opinion mining. In R. Agrawal & N. Gupta (Eds.), Extracting knowledge from opinion mining (pp. 1-19). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-6117-0.ch001
Trepte, S., & Scherer, H. (2010). Opinion leaders - Do they know more than others about their area of interest? Communications, 35(2), 119-140. https://doi.org/10.1515/comm.2010.007