Who says what to whom on twitter
- 28 March 2011
- conference paper
- conference paper
- Published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
- p. 705-714
- https://doi.org/10.1145/1963405.1963504
Abstract
We study several longstanding questions in media communications research, in the context of the microblogging service Twitter, regarding the production, flow, and consumption of information. To do so, we exploit a recently introduced feature of Twitter known as "lists" to distinguish between elite users - by which we mean celebrities, bloggers, and representatives of media outlets and other formal organizations - and ordinary users. Based on this classification, we find a striking concentration of attention on Twitter, in that roughly 50% of URLs consumed are generated by just 20K elite users, where the media produces the most information, but celebrities are the most followed. We also find significant homophily within categories: celebrities listen to celebrities, while bloggers listen to bloggers etc; however, bloggers in general rebroadcast more information than the other categories. Next we re-examine the classical "two-step flow" theory of communications, finding considerable support for it on Twitter. Third, we find that URLs broadcast by different categories of users or containing different types of content exhibit systematically different lifespans. And finally, we examine the attention paid by the different user categories to different news topics.Keywords
This publication has 10 references indexed in Scilit:
- Inferring networks of diffusion and influencePublished by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) ,2010
- What is Twitter, a social network or a news media?Published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) ,2010
- TwitterRankPublished by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) ,2010
- A New Era of Minimal Effects? The Changing Foundations of Political CommunicationJournal of Communication, 2008
- Robust dynamic classes revealed by measuring the response function of a social systemProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2008
- Empirical Analysis of an Evolving Social NetworkScience, 2006
- Media sociologyTheory and Society, 1978
- The People’S ChoicePublished by Columbia University Press ,1968
- The Diffusion of an Innovation Among PhysiciansSociometry, 1957
- The Two-Step Flow of Communication: An Up-To-Date Report on an HypothesisPublic Opinion Quarterly, 1957