Abstract

The many decisions people make about what information to consume affect emerging trends, their popularity, and the diffusion of information through online social networks. Due to constraints of available time and cognitive resources, the ease of discovery strongly affects how people allocate their attention. Through empirical analysis and online experiments, I measure the impact of cognitive biases on collective attention. I show that position of information in the user interface strongly determines whether it is seen, while explicit signals about its popularity increases the likelihood of response. Accounting for these factors simplifies dynamics of information diffusion, allows for more accurate prediction of social behavior, and explains why most memes fail to spread widely online.

Date

July 4, 2017

Authors

Kristina Lerman

Book

Proceedings of the 28th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media

Pages

1-1