Multi-Level Modeling of Quotation Families Morphogenesis

This paper investigates cultural dynamics in social media by examining the proliferation and diversification of clearly-cut pieces of content: quoted texts. In line with the pioneering work of Leskovec et al. and Simmons et al. on memes dynamics we investigate in deep the transformations that quotations published online undergo during their diffusion. We deliberately put aside the structure of the social network as well as the dynamical patterns pertaining to the diffusion process to focus on the way quotations are changed, how often they are modified and how these changes shape more or less diverse families and sub-families of quotations. Following a biological metaphor, we try to understand in which way mutations can transform quotations at different scales and how mutation rates depend on various properties of the quotations.Comment: Published in the Proceedings of the ASE/IEEE 4th Intl. Conf. on Social Computing "SocialCom 2012", Sep. 3-5, 2012, Amsterdam, N

Competition and Selection Among Conventions

In many domains, a latent competition among different conventions determines which one will come to dominate. One sees such effects in the success of community jargon, of competing frames in political rhetoric, or of terminology in technical contexts. These effects have become widespread in the online domain, where the data offers the potential to study competition among conventions at a fine-grained level. In analyzing the dynamics of conventions over time, however, even with detailed on-line data, one encounters two significant challenges. First, as conventions evolve, the underlying substance of their meaning tends to change as well; and such substantive changes confound investigations of social effects. Second, the selection of a convention takes place through the complex interactions of individuals within a community, and contention between the users of competing conventions plays a key role in the convention's evolution. Any analysis must take place in the presence of these two issues. In this work we study a setting in which we can cleanly track the competition among conventions. Our analysis is based on the spread of low-level authoring conventions in the eprint arXiv over 24 years: by tracking the spread of macros and other author-defined conventions, we are able to study conventions that vary even as the underlying meaning remains constant. We find that the interaction among co-authors over time plays a crucial role in the selection of them; the distinction between more and less experienced members of the community, and the distinction between conventions with visible versus invisible effects, are both central to the underlying processes. Through our analysis we make predictions at the population level about the ultimate success of different synonymous conventions over time--and at the individual level about the outcome of "fights" between people over convention choices.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of WWW 2017, data at https://github.com/CornellNLP/Macro

Modélisation multiniveau de la morphogenèse de familles de citations

Dans cet article, nous étudions les dynamiques de prolifération et de diversification des « citations » dans la blogosphère. Dans la continuité des travaux séminaux de Leskovec et Simmons sur les dynamiques « culturelles » dans les médias sociaux, nous analysons en profondeur les transformations que les citations subissent au cours de leur diffusion en ligne. Nous ne visons pas dans notre approche à modéliser la dynamique temporelle du processus de diffusion mais plutôt de décrire finement la nature des changements qui affectent les expressions placées entre guillemets. Quelles sont les grands types de transformations observées et quelles propriétés des citations les rendent plus ou moins sensibles à ces mutations ? En poursuivant la métaphore biologique, nous essayons de comprendre comment des mutations à différentes échelles génèrent des « espèces » de citations (familles).In this paper we study the dynamics of growth and diversification of quotations in the blogosphere. In line with the seminal work of Leskovec and Simmons on cultural dynamic in social media, we analyze in depth the changes that quotations undergo during their dispersal. In our approach we do not aim to model the temporal dynamics of the diffusion process but rather to accurately describe the nature of the changes that affect quoted texts. What are the major types of changes observed and what properties of the quotations make them more or less prone to these changes ? Following a biological metaphor, we try to understand which way these changes at different scales