Information Retention in the Multi-platform Sharing of Science

The public interest in accurate scientific communication, underscored by recent public health crises, highlights how content often loses critical pieces of information as it spreads online. However, multi-platform analyses of this phenomenon remain limited due to challenges in data collection. Collecting mentions of research tracked by Altmetric LLC, we examine information retention in the over 4 million online posts referencing 9,765 of the most-mentioned scientific articles across blog sites, Facebook, news sites, Twitter, and Wikipedia. To do so, we present a burst-based framework for examining online discussions about science over time and across different platforms. To measure information retention we develop a keyword-based computational measure comparing an online post to the scientific article's abstract. We evaluate our measure using ground truth data labeled by within field experts. We highlight three main findings: first, we find a strong tendency towards low levels of information retention, following a distinct trajectory of loss except when bursts of attention begin in social media. Second, platforms show significant differences in information retention. Third, sequences involving more platforms tend to be associated with higher information retention. These findings highlight a strong tendency towards information loss over time - posing a critical concern for researchers, policymakers, and citizens alike - but suggest that multi-platform discussions may improve information retention overall.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, accepted at the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM, 2023

By any memes necessary? Small political acts, incidental exposure and memes during the 2017 UK general election

Following the 2017 UK general election, there was much debate about the so-called ‘youthquake’, or increase in youth turnout (YouGov). Some journalists claimed it was the ‘. . . memes wot won it’. This article seeks to understand the role of memes during political campaigns. Combining meta-data and content analysis, this article aims to answer three questions. First, who creates political memes? Second, what is the level of engagement with political memes and who engages with them? Finally, can any meaningful political information be derived from memes? The findings here suggest that by far the most common producers of memes were citizens suggesting that memes may be a form of citizen-initiated political participation. There was a high level of engagement with memes with almost half a million shares in our sample. However, the level of policy information in memes was low suggesting they are unlikely to increase political knowledge

Strategies of success for social networks: Mermaids and temporal evolution

The main goal of this article is to investigate techniques that can quickly lead to successful social systems by boosting network connectivity. This is especially useful when starting new online communities where the aim is to increase the system utilization as much as possible. This aspect is very important nowadays, given the existence of many online social networks available on the web, and the relatively high level of competition. In other words, attracting users' attention is becoming a major concern, and time is an essential factor when investing money and resources into online social systems. Our study describes an effective technique that deals with this issue by introducing the notion of mermaids, special attractors that alter the normal evolutive behavior of a social system. We analyze how mermaids can boost social networks, and then provide estimations of fundamental parameters that business strategists can take into account in order to obtain successful systems within a constrained budget