Global connectivity and multilinguals in the Twitter network
Published 26 April 2014
Scott A. Hale
Citations75
Generate an AI Snapshot to get a quick, structured summary of this paper.
Study Snapshot
ObjectiveStudy objective
MethodsResearch methodology
PopulationPopulation studied
Sample sizeSample sizes
OutcomesStudy outcomes here
ResultsStudy results comes here
LimitationsResearch study limitations comes here
A concise AI-generated summary of the paper will appear here once you click Generate AI Snapshot.
TL;DR
The English language does play more of a bridging role than other languages, but the role played collectively by multilingual users across different languages is the largest bridging force in the network.
Abstract
This article analyzes the global connectivity of the Twitter retweet and mentions network and the role of multilingual users engaging with content in multiple languages. The network is heavily structured by language with most mentions and retweets directed to users writing in the same language. Users writing in multiple languages are more active, authoring more tweets than monolingual users. These multilingual users play an important bridging role in the global connectivity of the network. The mean level of insularity from speakers in each language does not correlate straightforwardly with the size of the user base as predicted by previous research. Finally, the English language does play more of a bridging role than other languages, but the role played collectively by multilingual users across different languages is the largest bridging force in the network.
Keywords
Social SciencesPhysics and Astronomy
Physical Review EFinding and evaluating community structure in networks
13,892 Citations2004Michelle G. Newman, Michelle Girvan
It is demonstrated that the algorithms proposed are highly effective at discovering community structure in both computer-generated and real-world network data, and can be used to shed light on the sometimes dauntingly complex structure of networked systems.
Physical Review ENear linear time algorithm to detect community structures in large-scale networks
3,542 Citations2007Usha Nandini Raghavan, Réka Albert +1 more
This paper investigates a simple label propagation algorithm that uses the network structure alone as its guide and requires neither optimization of a predefined objective function nor prior information about the communities.
Everyone's an influencer
1,659 Citations2011Eytan Bakshy, Jake M. Hofman +2 more
It is concluded that word-of-mouth diffusion can only be harnessed reliably by targeting large numbers of potential influencers, thereby capturing average effects and that predictions of which particular user or URL will generate large cascades are relatively unreliable.
Social NetworksGeography of Twitter networks
619 Citations2011Yuri Takhteyev, Anatoliy Gruzd +1 more
It is found that the frequency of airline flights between the two parties is the best predictor of Twitter ties, highlighting the importance of looking at pre-existing ties between places and people.
The Professional GeographerWhere in the World Are You? Geolocation and Language Identification in Twitter
317 Citations2014Mark Graham, Scott A. Hale +1 more
This article compares three automated language identification packages to Twitter's user interface language setting and to a human coding of languages to identify common sources of disagreement and demonstrates that in many cases user-entered profile locations differ from the physical locations from which users are actually tweeting.
Journal of Computer-Mediated CommunicationLanguage Choice Online: Globalization and Identity in Egypt
236 Citations2006Mark Warschauer, Ghada Refaat El Said +1 more
This paper combines linguistic analysis, a survey, and interviews to examine English and Arabic language use in online communications by a group of young professionals in Egypt and indicates that, among this group, English is used overwhelmingly in Web use and in formal e-mail communication, but that a Romanized version of Egyptian Arabic is used extensively in informal e- email messages and online chats.
Lecture notes in computer scienceEfficient and Simple Generation of Random Simple Connected Graphs with Prescribed Degree Sequence
221 Citations2005Fabien Viger, Matthieu Latapy
Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social MediaLanguage Matters In Twitter: A Large Scale Study
214 Citations2021Lichan Hong, Gregorio Convertino +1 more
Examining users of the top 10 languages, a study of 62 million tweets collected over a four-week period found cross-language differences in adoption of features such as URLs, hashtags, mentions, replies, and retweets.
Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection
179 Citations2013Ethan Zuckerman
Media scholar and activist Ethan Zuckerman explains why the technological ability to communicate with someone does not inevitably lead to increased human connection, and offers a map of the social, technical, and policy innovations needed to more tightly connect the world.
The tower of Babel meets web 2.0
159 Citations2010Brent Hecht, Darren Gergle
This study explores language's fragmenting effect on user-generated content by examining the diversity of knowledge representations across 25 different Wikipedia language editions and demonstrates that the diversity present is greater than has been presumed in the literature and has a significant influence on applications that use Wikipedia as a source of world knowledge.
Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social MediaGeographic Dissection of the Twitter Network
154 Citations2021Juhi Kulshrestha, Farshad Kooti +2 more
The in-depth analysis reveals that geography continues to have a significant impact on user interactions in the Twitter social network, and could be explained by the shared national, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds of users from the same geographic neighborhood.
New Media & SocietyMapping the Arabic blogosphere: politics and dissent online
115 Citations2010Bruce Etling, John Kelly +2 more
This study explores the structure and content of the Arabic blogosphere using link analysis, term frequency analysis, and human coding of individual blogs to find the most politically active areas to be clusters of bloggers in Egypt, Kuwait, Syria, and the Levant.
Omnipedia
100 Citations2012Patti Bao, Brent Hecht +4 more
A study of Omnipedia that characterizes how people interact with information using a multilingual lens found that users actively sought information exclusive to unfamiliar language editions and strategically compared how language editions defined concepts.
Language Networks on LiveJournal
74 Citations2007Susan C. Herring, John C. Paolillo +6 more
Journal of Computer-Mediated CommunicationLanguage Choice on a Swiss Mailing List
64 Citations2006Mercedes Durham
Qualitative analysis of comments by the members in the e-mails themselves and in interviews provides clues as to why English has become so important on the mailing list and for the global spread of English via the Internet.
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and TechnologyTrending <scp>T</scp>witter topics in <scp>E</scp>nglish: An international comparison
62 Citations2012David Wilkinson, Mike Thelwall
The political implication is that the Twitter-using public reflects, and hence seems to implicitly accept, international imbalances in news media agenda setting rather than combating them, and gives evidence of an international hierarchy of perceived importance or relevance with some issues.
International Political Science ReviewPhysical Distance and Language as Determinants of the International Telecommunications Network
55 Citations1995George A. Barnett, Young Eun Choi
New Review of Hypermedia and MultimediaResistance to globalization: Language and Internet diffusion patterns in Uzbekistan
54 Citations2005Carolyn Wei, Beth Kolko
How the Internet can facilitate cultural expression that resists the homogenizing effects of globalization is discussed, which examines how local cultures adapt their linguistic behavior and language choices to the Internet and express themselves in culturally meaningful ways without being subsumed by a global agenda.
Journal of Computer-Mediated CommunicationNet Increase? Cross-Lingual Linking in the Blogosphere
51 Citations2012Scott A. Hale
This study finds English-language blogs are significantly less likely to link cross-lingually than Spanish or Japanese blogs, however, bloggers' awareness of foreign language content increases over time.
Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and TechnologyBridging languages in social networks: How multilingual users of Twitter connect language communities?
31 Citations2012Irene Eleta, Jennifer Golbeck
This study aims at defining and classifying language bridges by looking at the languages and structure of the social networks of multilingual individuals on the microblogging site Twitter.
Oxford University Press eBooksLanguage Choice on a Swiss Mailing List
30 Citations2007Mercedes Durham
UvA-DARE (University of Amsterdam)Semi-Supervised Priors for Microblog Language Identification
18 Citations2011S. Carter, E. Tsagkias +1 more
arXiv (Cornell University)The Mesh of Civilizations and International Email Flows
11 Citations2013Bogdan State, Patrick Park +3 more
The locations of the world’s countries in global email networks are mapped to see if they could detect cultural fault lines and shows that email flows are consistent with Huntington’S thesis, attest to the importance of both cultural and economic factors in the patterning of inter-country communication ties.
Impact of platform design on cross-language information exchange
10 Citations2012Scott A. Hale
The paper finds that a greater number of Links are shared across languages on Twitter, while a higher percentage of links are shared between Wikipedia articles.