skip to main content

Explore Research Products in the NSF-PAR

Title: Bridging Nations: Quantifying the Role of Multilinguals in Communication on Social Media
Social media enables the rapid spread of many kinds of information, from pop culture memes to social movements. However, little is known about how information crosses linguistic boundaries. We apply causal inference techniques on the European Twitter network to quantify the structural role and communication influence of multilingual users in cross-lingual information exchange. Overall, multilinguals play an essential role; posting in multiple languages increases betweenness centrality by 13%, and having a multilingual network neighbor increases monolinguals’ odds of sharing domains and hashtags from another language 16-fold and 4-fold, respectively. We further show that multilinguals have a greater impact on diffusing information is less accessible to their monolingual compatriots, such as information from far-away countries and content about regional politics, nascent social movements, and job opportunities. By highlighting information exchange across borders, this work sheds light on a crucial component of how information and ideas spread around the world.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1815875 2007251
NSF-PAR ID:
10450316
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
Volume:
17
ISSN:
2162-3449
Page Range / eLocation ID:
626 to 637
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ; ; ; ; ; ( , Applied Network Science)
    Abstract

    We propose and extend a qualitative, complex systems methodology from cognitive engineering, known as theabstraction hierarchy, to model how potential interventions that could be carried out by social media platforms might impact social equality. Social media platforms have come under considerable ire for their role in perpetuating social inequality. However, there is also significant evidence that platforms can play a role inreducingsocial inequality, e.g. through the promotion of social movements. Platforms’ role in producing or reducing social inequality is, moreover, not static; platforms can and often do take actions targeted at positive change. How can we develop tools to help us determine whether or not a potential platform change might actually work to increase social equality? Here, we present the abstraction hierarchy as a tool to help answer this question. Our primary contributions are two-fold. First, methodologically, we extend existing research on the abstraction hierarchy in cognitive engineering with principles from Network Science. Second, substantively, we illustrate the utility of this approach by using it to assess the potential effectiveness of a set of interventions, proposed in prior work, for how online dating websites can help mitigate social inequality.

     
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ( , Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media)

    This study examines how the relationship between social media discourse and offline confrontations in social movements, focusing on the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests following George Floyd's death in 2020. While social media's role in facilitating social movements is well-documented, its relationship with offline confrontations remains understudied. To bridge this gap, we curated a dataset comprising 108,443 Facebook posts and 1,406 offline BLM protest events. Our analysis categorized online media framing into consonance (alignment) and dissonance (misalignment) with the perspectives of different involved parties. Our findings indicate a reciprocal relationship between online activism support and offline confrontational occurrences. Online support for the BLM, in particular, was associated with less property damage and fewer confrontational protests in the days that followed. Conversely, offline confrontations amplified online support for the protesters. By illuminating this dynamic, we highlight the multifaceted influence of social media on social movements. Not only does it serve as a platform for information dissemination and mobilization but also plays a pivotal role in shaping public discourse about offline confrontations.

     
    more » « less
  3. ( , Political Psychology)

    Those around us have a profound influence on our political attitudes and attitude strength, such that people whose social networks include a variety of perspectives have weaker, less deeply entrenched attitudes than those who are surrounded by like‐minded others. In particular, those embedded in attitudinally heterogeneous networks are more open to changing their views. The nature and mechanisms of this network influence on openness to attitude change remain unclear. A survey experiment examines two mechanisms proposed by prior literature: (1)social doubttriggered by network members' dissent and (2)social constraintto maintain similar attitudes. It also provides some data on the more commonly assumed mechanism, (3) information exchange. Results strongly support social constraint and are mixed on social doubt. This contrasts with the theoretical emphasis of much previous interdisciplinary social network research, which has focused primarily on information exchange, to the detriment of other mechanisms. Findings also indicate that like‐minded social network members solidify attitudes at least as much as dissent erodes them, suggesting that prior emphasis on the influence of heterogeneous rather than attitudinally congruent networks is overstated. Implications for political movements are discussed.

     
    more » « less
  4. ; ( , Human Brain Mapping)
    Abstract

    Facial motion is a primary source of social information about other humans. Prior fMRI studies have identified regions of the superior temporal sulcus (STS) that respond specifically to perceived face movements (termed fSTS), but little is known about the nature of motion representations in these regions. Here we use fMRI and multivoxel pattern analysis to characterize the representational content of the fSTS. Participants viewed a set of specific eye and mouth movements, as well as combined eye and mouth movements. Our results demonstrate that fSTS response patterns contain information about face movements, including subtle distinctions between types of eye and mouth movements. These representations generalize across the actor performing the movement, and across small differences in visual position. Critically, patterns of response to combined movements could be well predicted by linear combinations of responses to individual eye and mouth movements, pointing to a parts‐based representation of complex face movements. These results indicate that the fSTS plays an intermediate role in the process of inferring social content from visually perceived face movements, containing a representation that is sufficiently abstract to generalize across low‐level visual details, but still tied to the kinematics of face part movements.

     
    more » « less
  5. ; ( , Socio-Economic Review)
    Abstract Although economic sociology emphasizes the role of social networks for shaping economic action, little research has examined how network governance structures affect prices in the unregulated and high-risk social context of online criminal trade. We consider how overembeddedness—a state of excessive interconnectedness among market actors—arises from endogenous trade relations to shape prices in illegal online markets with aggregate consequences for short-term gross illegal revenue. Drawing on transaction-level data on 16 847 illegal drug transactions over 14 months of trade in a ‘darknet’ drug market, we assess how repeated exchanges and closure in buyer–vendor trade networks nonlinearly influence prices and short-term gross revenue from illegal drug trade. Using a series of panel models, we find that increases in closure and repeated exchange raise prices until a threshold is reached upon which prices and gross monthly revenue begin to decline as networks become overembedded. Findings provide insight into the network determinants of prices and gross monthly revenue in illegal online drug trade and illustrate how network structure shapes prices in criminal markets, even in anonymous trade environments. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email