9,030 research outputs found
The role of homophily in the emergence of opinion controversies
Understanding the emergence of strong controversial issues in modern
societies is a key issue in opinion studies. A commonly diffused idea is the
fact that the increasing of homophily in social networks, due to the modern
ICT, can be a driving force for opinion polariation. In this paper we address
the problem with a modelling approach following three basic steps. We first
introduce a network morphogenesis model to reconstruct network structures where
homophily can be tuned with a parameter. We show that as homophily increases
the emergence of marked topological community structures in the networks
raises. Secondly, we perform an opinion dynamics process on homophily dependent
networks and we show that, contrary to the common idea, homophily helps
consensus formation. Finally, we introduce a tunable external media pressure
and we show that, actually, the combination of homophily and media makes the
media effect less effective and leads to strongly polarized opinion clusters.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figure
Link Formation on Twitter: The Role of Achieved Status and Value Homophily
Homophily has been a widely recognized dominant factor in offline social network connection, which refers to oneâs propensity to seek interactions with others of similar status or values. Existing studies regarding homophily factors have been limited mostly to offline sociodemographic characteristics, such as race, gender, religion, education and occupation, which may not necessarily manifest homophily in online social network. Some researchers dabble in online social network, but they extract homophily characteristics from static user profile or link data, which has not incorporated the dynamic process of social network. To better understand the key factors in the establishment of online relationship, we explore a large data set on Twitter, which contains all initiated links by 1453 organizational Twitter users over three months. An initiated link refers to organization following a user who is currently not a follower of the organization. We crawl data on a daily basis and monitor whether the initiated one-way link ends up with a two-way relationship. Based on the established homophily theory, we define two online homophily factors: achieved status homophily (estimated by the gap of the followers count), value homophily (measured by the overlap ratio of common followee, Pearson correlation, and Cosine similarity between two usersâ tweets, respectively). We find that both homophily factors play a key role in the formation of online reciprocal relationship, and the effect of status homophily is larger for superior followee (one who has more followers than the corresponding organization) than for inferior followee (one who has less followers than the corresponding organization). Our finding not only extends the offline âindividual- individualâ homophily theory to the new online âorganization- individualâ relationship, but also provides Twitter users insight into extending their social network by strategically targeting followee
A social network perspective on formation of peer relationships in Czech lower-secondary classrooms
Peer relationships in lower-secondary classrooms play a crucial part in students' academic and personal lives. This study uses social network analysis to investigate aspects influencing formation of both likeability and antipathy ties between students in Czech lower-secondary schools, with a special focus on the role on socioeconomic status. Data and research design employing exponential random graph models (ERGMs) allow researchers to explore roles of SES, gender, and several other structural network variables simultaneously. Using cross-sectional data from 435 students in 21 classrooms, this study suggests that high-SES students tend to receive more likeability ties and less antipathy ties compared to others. The overall results do not suggest a tendency of students to give preference to same-SES peers, however, SES homophily was found significant in 2 of the 21 sample classrooms. Additionally, this study confirms the effects of gender homophily, mutuality, transitivity, and preferential attachment on formation of peer relationships. The effects of SES seem to be related to the effect of mutuality, with networks with high mutuality effect not influenced by the effects of SES
The "Unfriending" Problem: The Consequences of Homophily in Friendship Retention for Causal Estimates of Social Influence
An increasing number of scholars are using longitudinal social network data
to try to obtain estimates of peer or social influence effects. These data may
provide additional statistical leverage, but they can introduce new inferential
problems. In particular, while the confounding effects of homophily in
friendship formation are widely appreciated, homophily in friendship retention
may also confound causal estimates of social influence in longitudinal network
data. We provide evidence for this claim in a Monte Carlo analysis of the
statistical model used by Christakis, Fowler, and their colleagues in numerous
articles estimating "contagion" effects in social networks. Our results
indicate that homophily in friendship retention induces significant upward bias
and decreased coverage levels in the Christakis and Fowler model if there is
non-negligible friendship attrition over time.Comment: 26 pages, 4 figure
Homophily and Long-Run Integration in Social Networks
We model network formation when heterogeneous nodes enter sequentially and
form connections through both random meetings and network-based search, but
with type-dependent biases. We show that there is "long-run integration,"
whereby the composition of types in sufficiently old nodes' neighborhoods
approaches the global type distribution, provided that the network-based search
is unbiased. However, younger nodes' connections still reflect the biased
meetings process. We derive the type-based degree distributions and group-level
homophily patterns when there are two types and location-based biases. Finally,
we illustrate aspects of the model with an empirical application to data on
citations in physics journals.Comment: 39 pages, 2 figure
The "Unfriending" Problem: The Consequences of Homophily in Friendship Retention for Causal Estimates of Social Influence
An increasing number of scholars are using longitudinal social network data
to try to obtain estimates of peer or social influence effects. These data may
provide additional statistical leverage, but they can introduce new inferential
problems. In particular, while the confounding effects of homophily in
friendship formation are widely appreciated, homophily in friendship retention
may also confound causal estimates of social influence in longitudinal network
data. We provide evidence for this claim in a Monte Carlo analysis of the
statistical model used by Christakis, Fowler, and their colleagues in numerous
articles estimating "contagion" effects in social networks. Our results
indicate that homophily in friendship retention induces significant upward bias
and decreased coverage levels in the Christakis and Fowler model if there is
non-negligible friendship attrition over time.Comment: 26 pages, 4 figure
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