The most influential Irish Twitter accounts have been revealed.
The Murray Tweet Index examines the most influential journalists on the social media site.
It shows that the leading 100 Irish journalists attract some three million followers.
Newstalk is a strong performer, with five journalists in the top 100 - including Pat Kenny at 4th.
Other Newstalk journalists in the top 100 include Richard Chambers, Bobby Kerr and Oisin Langan.
Today FM presenter, Matt Cooper has retained his position as the most influential Irish journalist.
TV3 political correspondent Gavan Reilly took second place, with Sunday World sports journalist Kevin Palmer in 3rd.
In various rankings, Sky News’ Ireland correspondent Darren McCaffrey topped the news category.
Independent News & Media’s Group Business Editor Dearbhail McDonald stayed top in business, Gavan Reilly topped the political category for the fourth consecutive year, followed by the Sunday Business Post’s political correspondent Hugh O’Connell and RTÉ political correspondent Martina Fitzgerald.
The index ranked over 720 journalists across six parameters - measuring popularity, quality of engagement and level of activity.
Analysing the results by outlet showed The Irish Times with the most journalists in the top 100, followed by RTÉ, Independent News & Media, the Sunday Business Post, Newstalk, the Sunday Times/The Times and the Irish Examiner and TV3.
Commenting on the index, director at Murray Doug Keatinge said: "The 29 new entrants in the top 100 list are a healthy sign of the fresh blood in the social media activity of Irish journalists.
"The reach of Irish journalists on Twitter continues to surge with the top 100 journalists listed having a combined 3m followers, up 16% on last year.
"2017 was a year which saw some major changes in the world of both journalism and Twitter, with growing criticism of the grey area of paid social media influencers now being investigated by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission.
"Trust has also been a cause for concern in terms of followers on Twitter, with increasing scrutiny of the proliferation of fake accounts and bots which may see some users overstating their real presence.
"More recently we have also seen research issued by MIT with the worrying finding that ‘fake news’ travels further and faster than the truth does on Twitter."
Murray says the data was based on the previous 3,200 tweets that the user had made (or if the user had yet to make 3,200 tweets then all their tweets to date).
To calculate the overall rankings it attached a weighting to the users’ ranking in each of the individual parameters.
