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#Bigbirds never die: Understanding social dynamics of emergent hashtag
We examine the growth, survival, and context of 256 novel hashtags during the 2012 U.S. presidential debates. Our analysis reveals the trajectories of hashtag use fall into two distinct classes: âwinnersâ that emerge more quickly and are sustained for longer periods of time than other âalso-ransâ hashtags. We propose a âconversational vibrancyâ framework to capture dynamics of hashtags based on their topicality, interactivity, diversity, and prominence. Statistical analyses of the growth and persistence of hashtags reveal novel relationships between features of this framework and the relative success of hashtags. Specifically, retweets always contribute to faster hashtag adoption, replies extend the life of âwinnersâ while having no effect on âalso-rans.â This is the first study on the lifecycle of hashtag adoption and use in response to purely exogenous shocks. We draw on theories of uses and gratification, organizational ecology, and language evolution to discuss these findings and their implications for understanding social influence and collective action in social media more generally
Quantifying the Effect of Sentiment on Information Diffusion in Social Media
Social media have become the main vehicle of information production and
consumption online. Millions of users every day log on their Facebook or
Twitter accounts to get updates and news, read about their topics of interest,
and become exposed to new opportunities and interactions. Although recent
studies suggest that the contents users produce will affect the emotions of
their readers, we still lack a rigorous understanding of the role and effects
of contents sentiment on the dynamics of information diffusion. This work aims
at quantifying the effect of sentiment on information diffusion, to understand:
(i) whether positive conversations spread faster and/or broader than negative
ones (or vice-versa); (ii) what kind of emotions are more typical of popular
conversations on social media; and, (iii) what type of sentiment is expressed
in conversations characterized by different temporal dynamics. Our findings
show that, at the level of contents, negative messages spread faster than
positive ones, but positive ones reach larger audiences, suggesting that people
are more inclined to share and favorite positive contents, the so-called
positive bias. As for the entire conversations, we highlight how different
temporal dynamics exhibit different sentiment patterns: for example, positive
sentiment builds up for highly-anticipated events, while unexpected events are
mainly characterized by negative sentiment. Our contribution is a milestone to
understand how the emotions expressed in short texts affect their spreading in
online social ecosystems, and may help to craft effective policies and
strategies for content generation and diffusion.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure
Predicting Successful Memes using Network and Community Structure
We investigate the predictability of successful memes using their early
spreading patterns in the underlying social networks. We propose and analyze a
comprehensive set of features and develop an accurate model to predict future
popularity of a meme given its early spreading patterns. Our paper provides the
first comprehensive comparison of existing predictive frameworks. We categorize
our features into three groups: influence of early adopters, community
concentration, and characteristics of adoption time series. We find that
features based on community structure are the most powerful predictors of
future success. We also find that early popularity of a meme is not a good
predictor of its future popularity, contrary to common belief. Our methods
outperform other approaches, particularly in the task of detecting very popular
or unpopular memes.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables. Proceedings of 8th AAAI Intl. Conf. on
Weblogs and social media (ICWSM 2014
Elite Tweets: Analysing the Twitter Communication Patterns of Labour Party Peers in the House of Lords
The micro-blogging platform Twitter has gained notoriety for its status as both a communication channel between private individuals, and as a public forum monitored by journalists, the public, and the state. Its potential application for political communication has not gone unnoticed; politicians have used Twitter to attract voters, interact with constituencies and advance issue-based campaigns. This article reports on the preliminary results of the research teamâs work with 21 peers sitting on the Labour frontbench. It is based on the monitoring and archival of the peersâ activity on Twitter for a period of 100 days from 16th May to 28th September 2012. Using a sample of more than 4,363 tweets and a mixed methodology combining semantic analysis, social network analysis and quantitative analysis, this paper explores the peersâ patterns of usage and communication on Twitter. Key findings are that as a tweeting community their behavior is consistent with others, however there is evidence that a coherent strategy is lacking. Labour peers tend to work in ego networks of self-interest as opposed to working together to promote party polic
Community tracking in a cMOOC and nomadic learner behavior identification on a connectivist rhizomatic learning network
This article contributes to the literature on connectivism, connectivist MOOCs (cMOOCs) and rhizomatic learning by examining participant interactions, community formation and nomadic learner behavior in a particular cMOOC, #rhizo15, facilitated for 6 weeks by Dave Cormier. It further focuses on what we can learn by observing Twitter interactions particularly. As an explanatory mixed research design, Social Network Analysis and content analysis were employed for the purposes of the research. SNA is used at the macro, meso and micro levels, and content analysis of one week of the MOOC was conducted using the Community of Inquiry framework. The macro level analysis demonstrates that communities in a rhizomatic connectivist networks have chaotic relationships with other communities in different dimensions (clarified by use of hashtags of concurrent, past and future events). A key finding at the meso level was that as #rhizo15 progressed and number of active participants decreased, interaction increased in overall network. The micro level analysis further reveals that, though completely online, the nature of open online ecosystems are very convenient to facilitate the formation of community. The content analysis of week 3 tweets demonstrated that cognitive presence was the most frequently observed, while teaching presence (teaching behaviors of both facilitator and participants) was the lowest. This research recognizes the limitations of looking only at Twitter when #rhizo15 conversations occurred over multiple platforms frequented by overlapping but not identical groups of people. However, it provides a valuable partial perspective at the macro meso and micro levels that contribute to our understanding of community-building in cMOOCs
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