Emotional Response and Bridging ties on Social Networks

Interpreting how Individual Attributes and Social Graph Properties intervene in the Surprise Response in Information Sharing

Digital Media Research MethodsPorto, DiMe 24th May 2013

Motivations Overview Research Question Literature Review Research Methods Desired Contributions Suggestions

Carlos Figueiredo

Motivation

Make a contribution to solve the problem of the ‘Portfolio Effect’ on Recommender System (e.g. content recommendation).

Measure novelty in an information flow.

Propose a methodology to measure and predict the delivering of novelty.

Overview

Content-Based“You bought, liked or

shared a bunch of things like Y”

Recommender Systems

Collaborative Filtering

“People like you bought, liked or

shared Y”

Trust-Based CF“People who bought,

liked or shared X also bought, liked or

shared Y”

e.g. Friend Network (Fb); Reputation Network (Ebay)

(1)

(2)

e.g. Amazon

(1) coding the genome of each song; (2) listen to other users’ radio stations

(Friends, Neighbors, Groups)

OverviewRecommenders

my proposal

Recommendation based on novelty.

Novelty delivering based on users attributes and in the social graph properties.

Surprise response as a proxy of the Novelty to design the framework.

Literature Review

Novelty delivering. Bridging ties

Dimensions implied on novelty. Emotional response (Surprise) Tie strength (between receptor and source of information) Homophily (similarities) Centrality (structural location in the social network)

topics of research

Literature Review

Bridging Ties

The Strength of Weak Ties (Granovetter 1973)

All bridges are weak ties. Not all weak ties are bridges.

Strong ties can be a bridge if such ties do not share ties with other individuals of the same clique.

novelty delivering

How to deliver novelty?

Literature Review

Bridging Ties

Structural Holes (Burt 1992)

Tie strength does not determine the information potential brought by a bridging tie.

Structural holes linked by actors determine the information potential. Ties established by non-

redundant links between actors.

novelty delivering

Structural Holes and Weak Ties(Burt 1992)

Weak ties and Structural holes (McEvily et al. 1999)

Literature Review

Emotional response

Ten primordial emotions (DES scale of Izard) (Izard 1991)

Emotions start with a process of cognitive appraisal (Finkenauer et al. 1998).

Novelty is one fundamental type of appraisal (e.g., Scherer 1984; Smith and Ellsworth 1987).

Surprise is a specific consequence of the appraisal of novelty (Finkenauer et al. 1998).

Can I predict novelty?

dimensions implied on novelty

Literature Review

Measuring tie strength

Amount of time, intimacy, intensity and reciprocal services (Granovetter 1973).

Closeness (Marsden et al. 1984).

Emotional support (Wellman and Wortley 1990).

Intensity and valence (Petrosky 2011).

dimensions implied on novelty

What makes a tie be strong?

Literature Review

Homophily

Demographic and Attitudinal similarities Status homophily

Background factors (economic status), gender, religion and ethnicity (McPherson et al. 2001).

Attitudinal homophily Perceived Homophily Measure (McCroskey et al. 1975;

2006).

Why some weak ties are not bridges?

dimensions implied on novelty

Literature Review

Homophily

Cognitive similarities based on: Music genres

Reflective and Complex, Intense and Rebellious, Upbeat and Conventional, and Energetic and Rhythmic (Rentfrow and Gosling 2003).

Emotional reaction to music genres. Similarities on information interests. Similarities on

emotional reaction to the information accessed. Equal preferences on content posted (survey).

dimensions implied on novelty

Literature Review

Centrality Degree; betweeness; closeness (Freeman 1979)

Centrality and information flow (Borgatti et al. 2009; Mori et al. 2010)

Centrality and friendship network (Opshal 2010; Afuah 2013)

Can I predict structural location?

dimensions implied on novelty

Research questions

Does surprise define bridging ties?

Can similarities in individual attributes and structural location in the network determine the stimulus of surprise?

Hypothesis

H1 – Is more likely that an individual become surprised by a weak tie than by a strong tie.

H2 – The non redundancy between ties is predictor of surprise.

H3 – The degree of homophily justifies the conditions that make someone weakly tied to another person acting as a bridge.

H4 – Users' popularity is independent of the novelty appraisal by the receptors.

Research Methods

Survey Emotional response, particularly on surprise Ties strength Homophily

SPSS Statistics (Logistic regression; Multivariate regression;

Mann-Whitney test)

Research Methods

NodeXl Centrality variables (degree; betweeness; closeness)

Graph 1 - Emotional reaction to information sharing

Graph 2 – Friendship network

Desired contribution

Emotional reaction as a relevant property for social networks analysis.

A methodology that identifies bridging ties and characterizes the delivering of novelty based in the stimulus of surprise.

A framework for recommendation systems based on weak ties as recommenders of surprising information or of new perspectives.

Suggestions

Comments are welcome… Thank you.

Carlos Figueiredo