The Emergence of Conventions in Twitter

  • Winter Mason | Stevens Institute of Technology

Although social conventions are a powerful guide for behavior, the way they emerge in communities is not well understood. We focus on competing conventions for attributing reposts to the original source on Twitter. We analyze a near-complete history of tweets, and observe how the conventions emerged and spread through the network of Twitter users. Initially the most successful conventions were borrowed from natural language (“via” and “retweeting”), but over time a community-specific convention came to dominate (“RT”). Additional evidence suggests this specificity to the community, along with efficiency of communication and the timing of the adoption, are key variables in the acceptance of the convention.

Speaker Details

Winter Mason received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology and Cognitive Science from Indiana University in 2007. From 2007-2011 he worked as a Visiting Scientist at Yahoo! Research in the Human and Social Dynamics group, and is currently an assistant professor in the Howe School of Technology Management at Stevens Institute of Technology., and collective intelligence.

Series: Microsoft Research Talks