Cultural Dimensions in Twitter: Time, Individualism and Power
Ruth García-Gavilanes (UPF - Barcelona) Daniele Quercia (Yahoo! Barcelona) Alejandro Jaimes (Yahoo! Barcelona)
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Culture
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Microblogs
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WHAT IS CULTURE ?
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CULTURE
Culture is a dimension that distinguishes members of one group or category of
people from others
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6
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HOW TO MEASURE CULTURE • Geert Hofstede: Cultural dimensions
Individualism Power Distance
• Levine : Pace of Life (Geography of time) • Perception of time
• Edward T. Hall
Monochronic vs Polychronic
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Pace of Life
Individualism Power Distance
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Not considered Levine
Hall
Culture and Social Media
Can such differences also be captured from online interactions?
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How to measure culture online? • Pace of Life
Predictability (tweets, mentions) Tweets in working hours
• Individualism vs. Collectivism Users interacting with others (mentions)
• Power Distance : Popularity Follow, recommend and accept recommendation preferentially from more popular users (in-degree imbalance).
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Sampling for 10 weeks in 2011
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2.34 geolocated
users
follows
#FollowFridday
12.6 K 1.9M
362 K 100>= out-degree <=1000
Top 30 countries to study The top 30 countries by # of users is representative of internet users
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United States
Brazil
United KingdomIndonesia
Canada
Mexico JapanNetherlandsVenezuela SpainAustralia
Germany
FranceArgentinaChileSouth Korea
ColombiaIrelandSouth Africa IndiaPhilippines TurkeyItalyRussiaSweden
New ZealandNorwayMalaysiaBelgiumSingapore
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6.5 7.0 7.5 8.0 8.5Log(Internet Penetration)
Log(
User
Cou
nt)
r = 0.63***
RESULTS
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Pace of Life : Predictability Entropy
a) tweets b) mentions
− pi ( j)log2 pi ( j)j=1
Ni
∑pi ( j) :
15
12AM
6AM
9AM
6 PM
9PM
12PM
# tweets in working hours
Interval j
Pace of Life : Predictability
Tweets Mentions
Users in working hours
Pace of life **-0.62 **-0.68 **-0.58
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The higher the pace of life , the more predictability The higher the pace of life the less fraction of users will tweet during working hours
p < 0:005 (***), p < 0:05 (**), and p < 0.1 (*)
Individualism : Interacting with others
IndonesiaVenezuela
MexicoJapanBrazilColombia
ChileSouth Korea Argentina
PhilippinesMalaysia Spain NetherlandsTurkeySouth Africa
Singapore Ireland Canada
FranceBelgiumSwedenNorway
New Zealand
Italy
Russia India
Germany
80
85
90
95
100
20 40 60 80
Individualism Index
Fractio
n of E
ngag
emen
t
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r= ***-0.55
p < 0:005 (***), p < 0:05 (**), and p < 0.1 (*)
Collectivist countries interact more with others
Individualism : Interacting with others
IndonesiaVenezuela
MexicoJapanBrazilColombia
ChileSouth Korea Argentina
PhilippinesMalaysia Spain NetherlandsTurkeySouth Africa
Singapore Ireland Canada
FranceBelgiumSwedenNorway
New Zealand
Italy
Russia India
Germany
80
85
90
95
100
20 40 60 80
Individualism Index
Frac
tion
of E
ngag
emen
t18
Hong et al.. “Language matters in twitter: A large scale study” ICWSM 11
Collectivism Interacting with others
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Power Distance: popularity imbalance
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follows
#FollowFridday
Popularity imbalance for:
seed followees
followees recommended
accepted recommended seed
Power Distance: popularity imbalance
Followers Followers/Followees
Users and followees **-0.62 **-0.67 Users and recommended user **-0.56 **-0.46 User and accepted recommended user
-0.44 -0.29
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p < 0:005 (***), p < 0:05 (**), and p < 0.1 (*)
Users prefer to follow and recommend more popular users than themselves in countries with a higher power distance
Power Indonesia
Venezuela
Norway
MalaysiaSingapore
Chile MexicoPhilippinesColombia
United States South Korea IndiaBrazilCanadaArgentinaAustralia RussiaItalyNew Zealand SpainGermany Japan FranceSouth AfricaUnited KingdomIreland TurkeyNetherlands BelgiumSweden
-1000
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
30 60 90
Power Distance Index
In-de
gree I
mbala
nce
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Power Indonesia
Venezuela
Norway
MalaysiaSingapore
Chile MexicoPhilippinesColombia
United States South Korea IndiaBrazilCanadaArgentinaAustralia RussiaItalyNew Zealand SpainGermany Japan FranceSouth AfricaUnited KingdomIreland TurkeyNetherlands BelgiumSweden
-1000
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
30 60 90
Power Distance Index
In-de
gree I
mbala
nce
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27% of all blog trends are about artists and celebrities (Silang et al, 2011)
Why is this important?
Indicator Pace of Time : Predictibility
Individualism:
Mentions
Power Distance:
Imbalance Mentions Users (%) GDP per capita
***0.55 **-0.57 **-0.41 **-0.48
Education ***0.58 **-0.51 -0.24 ***-0.60 Inequality ***-0.53 **0.49 *0.39 ***0.58
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What is next?
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• Language dependent features
• More Cultural Dimensions
• Temporal comparisons
More features
What is next?
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• User recommender • Individualistic vs. collectivistic ? • Predictable vs. unpredictable ?
• Interfaces personalization • Do collectivist countries need additional features to
interact easier? • More engagement?
• Information Propagation • By knowing the cultural characteristics of users, can
we increase re-tweet chance?
Application
Thank you @ruthygarcia
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