14,222 research outputs found
Traveling Trends: Social Butterflies or Frequent Fliers?
Trending topics are the online conversations that grab collective attention
on social media. They are continually changing and often reflect exogenous
events that happen in the real world. Trends are localized in space and time as
they are driven by activity in specific geographic areas that act as sources of
traffic and information flow. Taken independently, trends and geography have
been discussed in recent literature on online social media; although, so far,
little has been done to characterize the relation between trends and geography.
Here we investigate more than eleven thousand topics that trended on Twitter in
63 main US locations during a period of 50 days in 2013. This data allows us to
study the origins and pathways of trends, how they compete for popularity at
the local level to emerge as winners at the country level, and what dynamics
underlie their production and consumption in different geographic areas. We
identify two main classes of trending topics: those that surface locally,
coinciding with three different geographic clusters (East coast, Midwest and
Southwest); and those that emerge globally from several metropolitan areas,
coinciding with the major air traffic hubs of the country. These hubs act as
trendsetters, generating topics that eventually trend at the country level, and
driving the conversation across the country. This poses an intriguing
conjecture, drawing a parallel between the spread of information and diseases:
Do trends travel faster by airplane than over the Internet?Comment: Proceedings of the first ACM conference on Online social networks,
pp. 213-222, 201
Modeling and Analyzing Collective Behavior Captured by Many-to-Many Networks
L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen
Get Out of the Nest! Drivers of Social Influence in the #TwitterMigration to Mastodon
The migration of Twitter users to Mastodon following Elon Musk's acquisition
presents a unique opportunity to study collective behavior and gain insights
into the drivers of coordinated behavior in online media. We analyzed the
social network and the public conversations of about 75,000 migrated users and
observed that the temporal trace of their migrations is compatible with a
phenomenon of social influence, as described by a compartmental epidemic model
of information diffusion. Drawing from prior research on behavioral change, we
delved into the factors that account for variations across different Twitter
communities in the effectiveness of the spreading of the influence to migrate.
Communities in which the influence process unfolded more rapidly exhibit lower
density of social connections, higher levels of signaled commitment to
migrating, and more emphasis on shared identity and exchange of factual
knowledge in the community discussion. These factors account collectively for
57% of the variance in the observed data. Our results highlight the joint
importance of network structure, commitment, and psycho-linguistic aspects of
social interactions in describing grassroots collective action, and contribute
to deepen our understanding of the mechanisms driving processes of behavior
change of online groups
Issues Related to the Emergence of the Information Superhighway and California Societal Changes, IISTPS Report 96-4
The Norman Y. Mineta International Institute for Surface Transportation Policy Studies (IISTPS) at San José State University (SJSU) conducted this project to review the continuing development of the Internet and the Information Superhighway. Emphasis was placed on an examination of the impact on commuting and working patterns in California, and an analysis of how public transportation agencies, including Caltrans, might take advantage of the new communications technologies. The document reviews the technology underlying the current Internet “structure” and examines anticipated developments. It is important to note that much of the research for this limited-scope project was conducted during 1995, and the topic is so rapidly evolving that some information is almost automatically “dated.” The report also examines how transportation agencies are basically similar in structure and function to other business entities, and how they can continue to utilize the emerging technologies to improve internal and external communications. As part of a detailed discussion of specific transportation agency functions, it is noted that the concept of a “Roundtable Forum,” growing out of developments in Concurrent Engineering, can provide an opportunity for representatives from multiple jurisdictions to utilize the Internet for more coordinated decision-making. The report also included an extensive analysis of demographic trends in California in recent years, such as commute and recreational activities, and identifies how the emerging technologies may impact future changes
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