Contraction of Online Response to Major Events
Quantifying regularities in behavioral dynamics is of crucial interest for understanding collective social events such as panics or political revolutions. With the widespread use of digital communication media it has become possible to study massive data streams of user-created content in which indi...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Public Library of Science
2014
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/86186 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2026-5631 |
| _version_ | 1826214460756328448 |
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| author | Szell, Michael Ratti, Carlo Grauwin, Sebastian |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning Szell, Michael Ratti, Carlo Grauwin, Sebastian |
| author_sort | Szell, Michael |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Quantifying regularities in behavioral dynamics is of crucial interest for understanding collective social events such as panics or political revolutions. With the widespread use of digital communication media it has become possible to study massive data streams of user-created content in which individuals express their sentiments, often towards a specific topic. Here we investigate messages from various online media created in response to major, collectively followed events such as sport tournaments, presidential elections, or a large snow storm. We relate content length and message rate, and find a systematic correlation during events which can be described by a power law relation—the higher the excitation, the shorter the messages. We show that on the one hand this effect can be observed in the behavior of most regular users, and on the other hand is accentuated by the engagement of additional user demographics who only post during phases of high collective activity. Further, we identify the distributions of content lengths as lognormals in line with statistical linguistics, and suggest a phenomenological law for the systematic dependence of the message rate to the lognormal mean parameter. Our measurements have practical implications for the design of micro-blogging and messaging services. In the case of the existing service Twitter, we show that the imposed limit of 140 characters per message currently leads to a substantial fraction of possibly dissatisfying to compose tweets that need to be truncated by their users. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:05:43Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/86186 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:05:43Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/861862022-10-02T06:17:33Z Contraction of Online Response to Major Events Szell, Michael Ratti, Carlo Grauwin, Sebastian Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning Massachusetts Institute of Technology. SENSEable City Laboratory Szell, Michael Grauwin, Sebastian Ratti, Carlo Quantifying regularities in behavioral dynamics is of crucial interest for understanding collective social events such as panics or political revolutions. With the widespread use of digital communication media it has become possible to study massive data streams of user-created content in which individuals express their sentiments, often towards a specific topic. Here we investigate messages from various online media created in response to major, collectively followed events such as sport tournaments, presidential elections, or a large snow storm. We relate content length and message rate, and find a systematic correlation during events which can be described by a power law relation—the higher the excitation, the shorter the messages. We show that on the one hand this effect can be observed in the behavior of most regular users, and on the other hand is accentuated by the engagement of additional user demographics who only post during phases of high collective activity. Further, we identify the distributions of content lengths as lognormals in line with statistical linguistics, and suggest a phenomenological law for the systematic dependence of the message rate to the lognormal mean parameter. Our measurements have practical implications for the design of micro-blogging and messaging services. In the case of the existing service Twitter, we show that the imposed limit of 140 characters per message currently leads to a substantial fraction of possibly dissatisfying to compose tweets that need to be truncated by their users. Ericsson Inc. (‘‘Signature of Humanity’’ fellowship) 2014-04-16T19:57:35Z 2014-04-16T19:57:35Z 2014-02 2013-09 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 1932-6203 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/86186 Szell, Michael, Sébastian Grauwin, and Carlo Ratti. “Contraction of Online Response to Major Events.” Edited by Jesus Gomez-Gardenes. PLoS ONE 9, no. 2 (February 26, 2014): e89052. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2026-5631 en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0089052 PLoS ONE Creative Commons Attribution http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf Public Library of Science PLoS |
| spellingShingle | Szell, Michael Ratti, Carlo Grauwin, Sebastian Contraction of Online Response to Major Events |
| title | Contraction of Online Response to Major Events |
| title_full | Contraction of Online Response to Major Events |
| title_fullStr | Contraction of Online Response to Major Events |
| title_full_unstemmed | Contraction of Online Response to Major Events |
| title_short | Contraction of Online Response to Major Events |
| title_sort | contraction of online response to major events |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/86186 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2026-5631 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT szellmichael contractionofonlineresponsetomajorevents AT ratticarlo contractionofonlineresponsetomajorevents AT grauwinsebastian contractionofonlineresponsetomajorevents |