Semantic Web Dog Food

Presented at: 20th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2011)

by Shaomei Wu, Jake M. Hofman, Winter A. Mason, Duncan J. Watts

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 ex- amine the attention paid by the different user categories to different news topics.

Who Says What to Whom on Twitter was presented at this event.

Keywords: Diffusion, World Wide Web

Resource URI on the dog food server: http://data.semanticweb.org/conference/www/2011/paper/who-says-what-to-whom-on-twitter

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