TY - JOUR
T1 - Collective attention patterns under controlled conditions
AU - Ten Thij, Marijn
AU - Kaltenbrunner, Andreas
AU - Laniado, David
AU - Volkovich, Yana
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank Oliver Keyes and the WikiMedia Foundation for providing the page-view data that is used to select the proxy for the circadian rhythm in the data and Johan Bollen for his insightful comments during the preparation of this manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2019/9/1
Y1 - 2019/9/1
N2 - Increasing concerns over widespread manipulation have led to an examination of how the direct promotion of content affects user behavior. Several studies have hypothesized that promotions exert their effects through a combination of social influence and attention redirection that are presently not well understood. The particulars of the promotion mechanism itself, however, might play an important role. Here we focus on a particular type of promotion mechanism: one that promotes identical content for the entire community of users. Through a large-scale analysis of Wikipedia page-views we show that fundamentally different processes underpin the longitudinal dynamics of user attention and preferences on Wikipedia compared to other promotion systems. Whereas other platforms follow history dependent processes, we found that the effects of community-wide promotions can be modeled using a history independent process. These findings allow to effectively compare view dynamics across online services.
AB - Increasing concerns over widespread manipulation have led to an examination of how the direct promotion of content affects user behavior. Several studies have hypothesized that promotions exert their effects through a combination of social influence and attention redirection that are presently not well understood. The particulars of the promotion mechanism itself, however, might play an important role. Here we focus on a particular type of promotion mechanism: one that promotes identical content for the entire community of users. Through a large-scale analysis of Wikipedia page-views we show that fundamentally different processes underpin the longitudinal dynamics of user attention and preferences on Wikipedia compared to other promotion systems. Whereas other platforms follow history dependent processes, we found that the effects of community-wide promotions can be modeled using a history independent process. These findings allow to effectively compare view dynamics across online services.
U2 - 10.1016/j.osnem.2019.07.003
DO - 10.1016/j.osnem.2019.07.003
M3 - Article
SN - 2468-6964
VL - 13
JO - Online Social Networks and Media
JF - Online Social Networks and Media
M1 - 100047
ER -