Influencer Heatmaps and Sentiment Clouds

As digital ecosystems fragment into niche communities, micro-influencers have become key in shaping brand narratives. This study introduces a two-layered visual method—influencer heatmaps and sentiment clouds—to map how influence and emotions circulate in brand-focused digital spaces. Using social network analysis, NLP, and clustering, heatmaps reveal conversational hubs and attention flows, while transformer-based sentiment clouds show emotional registers tied to influencers and brand mentions. A conceptual framework linking influencer proximity, sentiment polarity, and behavioural engagement is tested with SEM, showing that micro-influencers with positive sentiment drive consumer behaviour more effectively than follower counts or macro metrics. By merging data visualisation with psychological interpretability, the study offers marketers and strategists a scalable, real-time tool for tracking influence and designing sentiment-aligned engagement strategies in decentralised digital ecosystems.