Long Trend Dynamics in Social Media

11 Pages Posted: 14 Jul 2011 Last revised: 22 Feb 2012

See all articles by Chunyan Wang

Chunyan Wang

Stanford University - Department of Applied Physics

Bernardo A. Huberman

CableLabs

Date Written: July 12, 2011

Abstract

A main characteristic of social media is that its diverse content, copiously generated by both standard outlets and general users, constantly competes for the scarce attention of large audiences. Out of this flood of information some topics manage to get enough attention to become the most popular ones and thus to be prominently displayed as trends. Equally important, some of these trends persist long enough so as to shape part of the social agenda. How this happens is the focus of this paper. By introducing a stochastic dynamical model that takes into account the user's repeated involvement with given topics, we can predict the distribution of trend durations as well as the thresholds in popularity that lead to their emergence within social media. Detailed measurements of datasets from Twitter confirm the validity of the model and its predictions..

Keywords: social media, attention, trends

JEL Classification: D70, E37, L15, M30

Suggested Citation

Wang, Chunyan and Huberman, Bernardo A., Long Trend Dynamics in Social Media (July 12, 2011). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1884687 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1884687

Chunyan Wang

Stanford University - Department of Applied Physics ( email )

CA
United States

Bernardo A. Huberman (Contact Author)

CableLabs ( email )

400 W California Ave
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
United States

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