Presentation done at the IR11 Conference, Gothenburg Sweden.

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Propagation paths of Information in
Social Network Sites
SIGSNA research project
Luca Rossi – University of Urbino “Carlo Bo”
luca.rossi@uniurb.it

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What is propagation in Friendfeed?

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data
All public entries (post and related comments)
(Sept. 6 –Sept. 19 2009)
≃ 10.500.000 posts
500.000 likes.≃
450.000 users.≃
15.000.000 di archi (subs).≃

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Data
196.350 Italian posts
Language Fidelity Index:
Number of Posts in a
Language / Number of Posts of
users with an entry in that
language.

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case study: propagation
Mike Bongiorno (famous Italian TV host) died on Sept. 8 2010.
The news appears in Friendfeed at 01.57 PM:
- First entry 130 comments
- All entries 585 comments

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Using timestamps and network of followers we have
been able to track the propagation paths identifying
major hubs.

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Long propagation chains No propagation
Short propagation chains

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Explicit news sharing is
followed by chatting and
discussion. This kind of activity
contribute to news
propagation
”
Bye Mike! We’re missing you!
Bye granpa Mike!
Mike, you’ve been a milestone of our TV
“
- Explicit news propagation.
- Implicit news propagation.
- Mourning ritual of the
networked public.

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tec nettec net real netreal net
edges 14,946,610 161,603
followers 44 13
Some connections are more
connections than others
When a connection is not
enough.

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First entry has the highest informative function
Most commented entry is a long and articulated discussion

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Mass media system 2.0 ?
Friendfeed Major Italian Newspapers
(Il Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica)

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Mass media system 2.0 ?
When the news hit the Friendfeed network
only SkyTg24 was broadcasting it.
The selection code is up to the end user and
he decides whenever a specific information
is informative.

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Mass media system 2.0 ?
Is the evolution of news/chat that we have
detected similar to couple news/reportage?

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More info, papers and data:
http://larica.uniurb.it/sigsna
SIGSNA is a joint research project with the department of Computer Science of the University of
Bologna (Dr. Matteo Magnani) and it is partially founded by Telecom Italia.