The Role of Network and Identity in the Diffusion of Hashtags

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Auteurs principaux: Ananthasubramaniam, Aparna, Zhu, Yufei 'Louise', Jurgens, David, Romero, Daniel
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Ananthasubramaniam, Aparna
Zhu, Yufei 'Louise'
Jurgens, David
Romero, Daniel
author_facet Ananthasubramaniam, Aparna
Zhu, Yufei 'Louise'
Jurgens, David
Romero, Daniel
contents The diffusion of culture online is theorized to be influenced by many interacting social factors (e.g., network and identity). However, most existing computational cascade models consider just a single factor (e.g., network or identity). This work offers a new framework for teasing apart the mechanisms underlying hashtag cascades. We curate a new dataset of 1,337 hashtags representing cultural innovation online, develop a 10-factor evaluation framework for comparing empirical and simulated cascades, and show that a combined network+identity model better simulates hashtag cascades than network- or identity-only counterfactuals. We also explore heterogeneity in performance: While a combined network+identity model best predicts the popularity of cascades, a network-only model best predicts cascade growth and an identity-only model best predicts adopter composition. The network+identity model has the highest comparative advantage among hashtags used for expressing racial or regional identity and talking about sports or news. In fact, we are able to predict what combination of network and/or identity best models each hashtag and use this to further improve performance. Our results show the utility of models incorporating the interactions of network, identity, and other social factors in the diffusion of hashtags in social media.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_12771
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Role of Network and Identity in the Diffusion of Hashtags
Ananthasubramaniam, Aparna
Zhu, Yufei 'Louise'
Jurgens, David
Romero, Daniel
Social and Information Networks
Computation and Language
Computers and Society
The diffusion of culture online is theorized to be influenced by many interacting social factors (e.g., network and identity). However, most existing computational cascade models consider just a single factor (e.g., network or identity). This work offers a new framework for teasing apart the mechanisms underlying hashtag cascades. We curate a new dataset of 1,337 hashtags representing cultural innovation online, develop a 10-factor evaluation framework for comparing empirical and simulated cascades, and show that a combined network+identity model better simulates hashtag cascades than network- or identity-only counterfactuals. We also explore heterogeneity in performance: While a combined network+identity model best predicts the popularity of cascades, a network-only model best predicts cascade growth and an identity-only model best predicts adopter composition. The network+identity model has the highest comparative advantage among hashtags used for expressing racial or regional identity and talking about sports or news. In fact, we are able to predict what combination of network and/or identity best models each hashtag and use this to further improve performance. Our results show the utility of models incorporating the interactions of network, identity, and other social factors in the diffusion of hashtags in social media.
title The Role of Network and Identity in the Diffusion of Hashtags
topic Social and Information Networks
Computation and Language
Computers and Society
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.12771