The Social World of Twitter

Topics, Geography, and Emotions

Bibliographic Data

ID7536049
AuthorsDaniele Quercia (0000-0001-9461-5804, University of Cambridge, corresponding author), Licia Capra (0000-0003-1425-3837, UCL Australia), Jon Crowcroft (0000-0002-7013-0121, University of Cambridge)
Year2021
Volume6
Issue1
Pages298-305
Publication date2021-08-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueProceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2162-3449 • E-ISSN: 2334-0770
PublisherAssociation for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1609/icwsm.v6i1.14254
OpenAlexW1662284448
LanguageEN
Citations received20
References cited17

Debate is open as to whether social media communities resemble real-life communities, and to what extent. We contribute to this discussion by testing whether established sociological theories of real-life networks hold in Twitter. In particular, for 228,359 Twitter profiles, we compute network metrics (e.g., reciprocity, structural holes, simmelian ties) that the sociological literature has found to be related to parts of one's social world (i.e., to topics, geography and emotions), and test whether these real-life associations still hold in Twitter. We find that, much like individuals in real-life communities, social brokers (those who span structural holes) are opinion leaders who tweet about diverse topics, have geographically wide networks, and express not only positive but also negative emotions. Furthermore, Twitter users who express positive (negative) emotions cluster together, to the extent of having a correlation coefficient between one's emotions and those of friends as high as 0.45. Understanding Twitter's social dynamics does not only have theoretical implications for studies of social networks but also has practical implications, including the design of self-reflecting user interfaces that make people aware of their emotions, spam detection tools, and effective marketing campaigns

Reciprocity (cultural anthropology · Social media · Social network (sociolinguistics · Social science · Sociology · World Wide Web · Complex Network Analysis Techniques · Computer Science · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence · Psychology · Social Media and Politics · Social Psychology

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