Computer Science – Social and Information Networks
Scientific paper
2012-01-19
Computer Science
Social and Information Networks
10 pages, 7 figures. In the Proceedings of ACM WWW 2012, April 16-20, 2012, Lyon, France
Scientific paper
Online social networking technologies enable individuals to simultaneously share information with any number of peers. Quantifying the causal effect of these technologies on the dissemination of information requires not only identification of who influences whom, but also of whether individuals would still propagate information in the absence of social signals about that information. We examine the role of social networks in online information diffusion with a large-scale field experiment that randomizes exposure to signals about friends' information sharing among 253 million subjects in situ. Those who are exposed are significantly more likely to spread information, and do so sooner than those who are not exposed. We further examine the relative role of strong and weak ties in information propagation. We show that, although stronger ties are individually more influential, it is the more abundant weak ties who are responsible for the propagation of novel information. This suggests that weak ties may play a more dominant role in the dissemination of information online than currently believed.
Adamic Lada
Bakshy Eytan
Marlow Cameron
Rosenn Itamar
No associations
LandOfFree
The Role of Social Networks in Information Diffusion does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with The Role of Social Networks in Information Diffusion, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and The Role of Social Networks in Information Diffusion will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-254915