www2013 budak
TRANSCRIPT
On Participation in Group Chats on Twitter
Ceren Budak Rakesh Agrawal UCSB Microsoft Search Labs
17 May 2013WWW’13
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RESEARCH QUESTION: WHAT MAKES A PERSON COME BACK TO A GROUP?Goal: Identifying the significant characteristics that signal whether a person that attended a given group for the first time will come back for at least one more meeting
?Implications from the individual perspective:Implications from the group perspective:
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Twitter Chats: Manifestations of groups in Twitter
– On a specific topic
– Regularly scheduled meet-ups (generally weekly, 1 hour each)
– Identified by a specific hashtag– How are Twitter chats unique?
Synchronous group discussions at scale
#adchat
#BCSM#teachchatand hundreds more…
#phdchat
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Data Sets
• All tweets from June 2010-July 2012
• A community-kept list of over 100 education chats– Filter to make sure we have entire history & enough history. Focus on
only synchronous conservations rather than all tweets tagged by the group hashtag
• 30 chat groups studied– General and specific– Big and small– Geographically distributed
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5F Model– Goal: Predicting continued
participation– Solution: We introduce 5F
Model that captures 5 high level families of factors
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1. Individual Initiative
“Due to differences in personality, motivations and past experiences some people are more likely than others to seek out membership in groups” Forsyth, Group Dynamics
• Big Five Theory: 5 high level personality traits that affect group participation. Most significantly extraversion
• Captured through #tweets user contributesin her first session
• We also look at: #retweets, #mentions, #urls
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2. Group Characteristics
• Amount of information: Information overload (Rogers, Agarwala-Rogers 1975)– Users are more likely to end active participation
(Jones et al. 2004)– Captured through #tweets and #urls in session
• Group Maturity: – Groups become more cohesive over time (Tuckman
1965). Such groups can get more closed (Ziller 1965)– Captured through #sessions to date
• We also look at: Informational Influence (#retweets) and Intermember Relations (#mentions)
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3. Perceived Receptivity
• Ostracism: To be deliberately ignored and excluded by others (Cyberostracism Williams & Sommer 2007)
• Captured through: Is mentioned? Is retweeted?
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4. Linguistic Affinity
• Speech Codes Theory (Philipsen 1997) suggests that use of language defines people as insiders/outsiders of groups
• Captured through: LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) with 81 different markers– High level categories:
• Linguistic processes (e.g. pronouns)• Psychological processes (e.g. positive/negative emotion)• Personal concerns (e.g. work, leisure)• Spoken categories (e.g. fillers) • Punctuation
– Use Pearson correlation between the LIWC vector of the user and the others in the session
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5. Geographical Proximity
• Proximity Principle (Newcomb 1960): People join groups that happen to be close-by
• Captured through: The average distance of the user to others in the session– We geo-tagged over 50% of users – Used Haversine formula to identify L2 distance:
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Putting it all Together
Statistically significant
# urls in session (information overload)
and group maturity (open-closed groups)
are statistically significant
Highly correlated
Odds ratio for ismentioned = exp(1)=2.7
Odds ratio for isretweeted = exp(0.69)=2
Similarity between the language of the user and
the group is strongly correlated with
becoming a member
Mildly correlated
Best individual modelLeast informative model
Focus of most related workWe find it to be the second to lastmost informative factor
Extraversion positively correlated and
statistically significant
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Survey Study
We circulated 26 question survey (60 participants)• To capture (1) usage, advantages and disadvantages,
(2) sense of community and responsibility, and (3) evolution of participation
≈
I just remember being overwhelmed with
excitement that I was actually being accepted
as a teacher whose ideas actually were
worthwhile (and not looked down upon) to
others.
… The group was very supportive -
retweeted my thoughts, asked
follow-up questions. …
I was welcomed and greeted warmly - I went
back - it wasn't repeated - but the conversation was
worth it, so I lurk and read archives.
… and at the beginning I felt like an outsider. I
think that it takes awhile to get the hang of chats.
…
Language identified as the most significant challengeDiversity in backgrounds and geography identified as the most important advantage
Check our paper for some other key results on types of social support and implications in commitment theory
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Conclusions & Implications
• Some suggestions for Twitter chat moderators/organizers– Pay close attention to social inclusion– Alleviate the negative effects of information overload– Enable geo-diversity: e.g. multiple sessions on different time-zones– Make the language familiarity easy for newcomers
• The greater goal: Nurturing groups & online education• Still much to be done
– Factors not captured in the model – Going beyond second attendance
Expected Surprising
Perceived Receptivity
Individual Initiative
Geographical ProximityGroup Characteristics
Linguistic Affinity
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THANK YOU! ANY QUESTIONS?
Overview of twitter chats studied
Number of tweets, users and sessions also vary
Some chats are more concentrated to a particular region while others
are more global
Includes groups focused on general topics like “#teachchat” as well as
more specific groups like “#1stchat”
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More about the data
• #users per chat • #chats per user
People attending “sessions” are significantly less
Skewed distribution
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More about the data
• Degree distribution
Skewed distribution common toSocial networks
Twitter mandated limit on number of users to follow
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Individual Initiative Model
“Due to differences in personality, motivations and past experiences some people are more likely than others to seek out membership in groups” Forsyth, Group Dynamics
We identify user behavior in their first session and test their predictive power for future participation
– #tweets: user contributes to the session– #urls: informational contribution by the user– #mentions: capturing how much user engages in conversations– #retweets:
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• Stages of group development (Tuckman 1965) & Open-Closed groups (Ziller 1965)– Groups become more cohesive over time where uncertainty about goals
and roles and authority are resolved – Captured through group maturity, i.e. #sessions
• Informational Influence: Group members using responses of others as reference points and informational resources (Forsyth 2008) – Captured through #retweets
• Intermember relations: (Forsyth 2008) Captured through #mentions
Group Characteristics
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LIWC categories and examples
Category Examples
Linguistic Processes Word count words/sentence Dictionary words Words>6 letters Total function words Total pronouns I, them, itself Personal pronouns I, them, her 1st pers singular I, me, mine 1st pers plural We, us, our 2nd person You, your, thou 3rd pers singular She, her, him 3rd pers plural They, their, they’d Impersonal pronouns It, it’s, those Articles A, an, the[Common verbs]a Walk, went, see Auxiliary verbs Am, will, have Past tense a Went, ran, had Present tense a Is, does, hear Future tense a Will, gonna Adverbs Very, really, quickly Prepositions To, with, above Conjunctions And, but, whereas Negations No, not, never Quantifiers Few, many, much Numbers Second, thousand
Swear words Damn, piss, fuck
Psychological Processes
Social processesb Mate, talk, they, child
Family Daughter, husband, aunt
Friends Buddy, friend, neighbor
Humans Adult, baby, boy
Affective processes Happy, cried, abandon
Positive emotion Love, nice, sweet
Negative emotion Hurt, ugly, nasty
Anxiety Worried, fearful, nervous
Anger Hate, kill, annoyed
Sadness Crying, grief, sad
Cognitive processes cause, know, ought
Insight think, know, consider
Causation because, effect, hence
Discrepancy should, would, could
Tentative maybe, perhaps, guess
Certainty always, never
Inhibition block, constrain, stop
Inclusive And, with, include
Exclusive But, without, exclude
Perceptual processesc Observing, heard, feeling
See View, saw, seen
Hear Listen, hearing
Feel Feels, touch
Biological processes Eat, blood, pain
Body Cheek, hands, spit
Health Clinic, flu, pill
Sexual Horny, love, incest
Ingestion Dish, eat, pizza
Relativity Area, bend, exit, stop
Motion Arrive, car, go
Space Down, in, thin
Time End, until, season
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LIWC Categories continued…Category ExamplesPersonal Concerns Work Job, majors, xeroxAchievement Earn, hero, winLeisure Cook, chat, movieHome Apartment, kitchen, familyMoney Audit, cash, oweReligion Altar, church, mosqueDeath Bury, coffin, killSpoken categories Assent Agree, OK, yesNonfluencies Er, hm, ummFillers Blah, Imean, youknow