This document summarizes a study of how information propagates on the social networking site Friendfeed. It analyzed over 10 million posts from September 2009 to track how news of Mike Bongiorno's death was shared. The study found both explicit news sharing and implicit discussion contributed to propagation. Short propagation chains had few shares while long chains spread the news more widely. The study also compared how quickly Friendfeed users learned of the news versus major Italian newspapers. It questions if social networks represent a new form of mass media.

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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.