Twitter ain't without frontiers: economic, social, and cultural boundaries in international communication
With the advent of Twitter and other lightweight social-networking services, one might think that it is easier than ever to maintain geographically dispersed, weaker social ties. By contrast, in this study we show that the international Twitter communication landscape is not only still largely prede...
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| Format: | Conference item |
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Association for Computing Machinery
2014
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| _version_ | 1797067943005126656 |
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| author | Garcia-Gavilanes, R Mejova, Y Quercia, D |
| author_facet | Garcia-Gavilanes, R Mejova, Y Quercia, D |
| author_sort | Garcia-Gavilanes, R |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | With the advent of Twitter and other lightweight social-networking services, one might think that it is easier than ever to maintain geographically dispersed, weaker social ties. By contrast, in this study we show that the international Twitter communication landscape is not only still largely predetermined by physical distance, but that it also depends on countries' social, economic, and cultural attributes. We describe a study of an international Twitter mention network of 13 million users across over 100 countries. We show that the Gravity Model, which hypothesizes that the flow between two areas is proportional to their masses (which we approximate using internet penetration) and inversely proportional to the distance between them, is correlated (r=0.68) with the international communication flow. Using this model, along with other social, economic, and cultural variables, we predict the communication volume at Adjusted R2 of $0.80$, with trade, language and racial intolerance especially impacting communication. We discuss the implications of these barriers to communication in the contexts of collaborative work, software design, and recommendation systems. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-06T22:03:38Z |
| format | Conference item |
| id | oxford-uuid:4f6b5942-f82f-4bef-b232-8a8e528ce39a |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-06T22:03:38Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | Association for Computing Machinery |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:4f6b5942-f82f-4bef-b232-8a8e528ce39a2022-03-26T16:07:07ZTwitter ain't without frontiers: economic, social, and cultural boundaries in international communicationConference itemhttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_5794uuid:4f6b5942-f82f-4bef-b232-8a8e528ce39aSymplectic Elements at OxfordAssociation for Computing Machinery2014Garcia-Gavilanes, RMejova, YQuercia, DWith the advent of Twitter and other lightweight social-networking services, one might think that it is easier than ever to maintain geographically dispersed, weaker social ties. By contrast, in this study we show that the international Twitter communication landscape is not only still largely predetermined by physical distance, but that it also depends on countries' social, economic, and cultural attributes. We describe a study of an international Twitter mention network of 13 million users across over 100 countries. We show that the Gravity Model, which hypothesizes that the flow between two areas is proportional to their masses (which we approximate using internet penetration) and inversely proportional to the distance between them, is correlated (r=0.68) with the international communication flow. Using this model, along with other social, economic, and cultural variables, we predict the communication volume at Adjusted R2 of $0.80$, with trade, language and racial intolerance especially impacting communication. We discuss the implications of these barriers to communication in the contexts of collaborative work, software design, and recommendation systems. |
| spellingShingle | Garcia-Gavilanes, R Mejova, Y Quercia, D Twitter ain't without frontiers: economic, social, and cultural boundaries in international communication |
| title | Twitter ain't without frontiers: economic, social, and cultural boundaries in international communication |
| title_full | Twitter ain't without frontiers: economic, social, and cultural boundaries in international communication |
| title_fullStr | Twitter ain't without frontiers: economic, social, and cultural boundaries in international communication |
| title_full_unstemmed | Twitter ain't without frontiers: economic, social, and cultural boundaries in international communication |
| title_short | Twitter ain't without frontiers: economic, social, and cultural boundaries in international communication |
| title_sort | twitter ain t without frontiers economic social and cultural boundaries in international communication |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT garciagavilanesr twitteraintwithoutfrontierseconomicsocialandculturalboundariesininternationalcommunication AT mejovay twitteraintwithoutfrontierseconomicsocialandculturalboundariesininternationalcommunication AT querciad twitteraintwithoutfrontierseconomicsocialandculturalboundariesininternationalcommunication |