An analysis on information diffusion by retweets in Twitter

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Computation for Design and Optimization Program, 2015.

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Sakamoto, Tomoaki
Other Authors: Roy E. Welsch.
Format: Thesis
Language:eng
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2015
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/97348
_version_ 1826201778610241536
author Sakamoto, Tomoaki
author2 Roy E. Welsch.
author_facet Roy E. Welsch.
Sakamoto, Tomoaki
author_sort Sakamoto, Tomoaki
collection MIT
description Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Computation for Design and Optimization Program, 2015.
first_indexed 2024-09-23T11:57:04Z
format Thesis
id mit-1721.1/97348
institution Massachusetts Institute of Technology
language eng
last_indexed 2024-09-23T11:57:04Z
publishDate 2015
publisher Massachusetts Institute of Technology
record_format dspace
spelling mit-1721.1/973482019-04-10T08:30:55Z An analysis on information diffusion by retweets in Twitter Sakamoto, Tomoaki Roy E. Welsch. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computation for Design and Optimization Program. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computation for Design and Optimization Program. Computation for Design and Optimization Program. Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Computation for Design and Optimization Program, 2015. Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references (pages 81-82). This dissertation examines retweeting activities as the information spreading function of Twitter. First, we investigated what kind of features of a tweet help to get retweets. We construct a model that describes peoples' decision making on retweets, and with related observation, we show that more retweeted tweets get retweeted more. In terms of specific features of tweets, it has been shown that the number of followers and the number of retweets are positively correlated, and hashtags attract more retweets than the tweets without hashtags. On the other hand, we also found that including hashtags and getting one or more retweets are statistically independent. Moreover, we showed including URLs or user-mentions in tweets and getting one or more retweets are statistically independent. In our results, including a picture is slightly effective to get this sense of retweetability. Second, we compare the retweeters of tweets including a picture and only text, especially focusing on distance from the original tweeters. Comparing the ratio of retweets by followers of the author of the original tweets among the initial 50 retweets, tweets with a picture have a slightly lower ratio, though there is no significant difference between the average for tweets with pictures and without pictures at the 95% significance level. We also investigate how many retweets are posted by users in followers' network connected to the original tweeter, and show that the depths of retweeters' network for tweets with picture have larger variance than that of tweets without pictures. This result implies that a tweet including picture can reach more people than a tweet without a picture potentially. by Tomoaki Sakamoto. S.M. 2015-06-10T19:12:21Z 2015-06-10T19:12:21Z 2015 2015 Thesis http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/97348 910560906 eng M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 82 pages application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology
spellingShingle Computation for Design and Optimization Program.
Sakamoto, Tomoaki
An analysis on information diffusion by retweets in Twitter
title An analysis on information diffusion by retweets in Twitter
title_full An analysis on information diffusion by retweets in Twitter
title_fullStr An analysis on information diffusion by retweets in Twitter
title_full_unstemmed An analysis on information diffusion by retweets in Twitter
title_short An analysis on information diffusion by retweets in Twitter
title_sort analysis on information diffusion by retweets in twitter
topic Computation for Design and Optimization Program.
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/97348
work_keys_str_mv AT sakamototomoaki ananalysisoninformationdiffusionbyretweetsintwitter
AT sakamototomoaki analysisoninformationdiffusionbyretweetsintwitter