2015/03/30 by Elad Oster, Erez Gilad, Alexander Feigel · 2 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · Social Sciences · #Barometer #Complex Network Analysis Techniques #Herding #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence #Public opinion #Social media #Subject (documents) #The Internet #cs.SI #physics.soc-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1209/0295-5075/111/28005
published in Europhysics Letters (EPL) 111(2), 28005 (Institute of Physics)
arxiv created 2015/03/30 · openalex publication_date 2015/07/01 · arxiv updated 2015/09/02 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
A new method is developed to estimate social influence in Internet communities that follow a specific developing news story. The technique stems from mean-field treatment of magnetic systems and provides a measure for community stability, such as the potential of a small perturbation to culminate in a phase-transition–like phenomenon. Three real cases of developing news stories from CNN news website are analyzed. Continuous dynamics of social influence together with time is observed together with a significant increase of social influence after the announcement of important information, such as the jury decision in a legal case. This work makes it possible to estimate the size of a group that can change the opinion of the entire population. We argue that Internet comments may predict the level of social response similar to a barometer that predicts the intensity of a coming storm in still calm environment.