Abstract

Individuals’ access to information in a social network depends on how it is distributed and where in the network individuals position themselves. In addition, individuals vary in how much effort they invest in managing their social connections. Using data from a social media site, we study how the interplay between effort and network position affects social media users’ access to diverse and novel information. Previous studies of the role of networks in information access were limited in their ability to measure the diversity of information. We address this problem by learning the topics of interest to social media users from the messages they share online with followers. We use the learned topics to measure the diversity of information users receive from the people they follow online. We confirm that users in structurally diverse network positions, which bridge otherwise disconnected regions of the follower network, tend to …

Date

March 10, 2017

Authors

Jeon-Hyung Kang, Kristina Lerman

Journal

ACM Transactions on the Web (TWEB)

Volume

11

Issue

1

Pages

1-19

Publisher

ACM