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The Topology of a Discussion: The #Occupy Case.


ABSTRACT: We analyse a large sample of the Twitter activity that developed around the social movement 'Occupy Wall Street', to study the complex interactions between the human communication activity and the semantic content of a debate.We use a network approach based on the analysis of the bipartite graph @Users-#Hashtags and of its projections: the 'semantic network', whose nodes are hashtags, and the 'users interest network', whose nodes are users. In the first instance, we find out that discussion topics (#hashtags) present a high structural heterogeneity, with a relevant role played by the semantic hubs that are responsible to guarantee the continuity of the debate. In the users' case, the self-organisation process of users' activity, leads to the emergence of two classes of communicators: the 'professionals' and the 'amateurs'.Both the networks present a strong community structure, based on the differentiation of the semantic topics, and a high level of structural robustness when certain sets of topics are censored and/or accounts are removed.By analysing the characteristics of the dynamical networks we can distinguish three phases of the discussion about the movement. Each phase corresponds to a specific moment of the movement: from declaration of intent, organisation and development and the final phase of political reactions. Each phase is characterised by the presence of prototypical #hashtags in the discussion.

SUBMITTER: Gargiulo F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4564107 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The Topology of a Discussion: The #Occupy Case.

Gargiulo Floriana F   Bindi Jacopo J   Apolloni Andrea A  

PloS one 20150909 9


<h4>Introduction</h4>We analyse a large sample of the Twitter activity that developed around the social movement 'Occupy Wall Street', to study the complex interactions between the human communication activity and the semantic content of a debate.<h4>Methods</h4>We use a network approach based on the analysis of the bipartite graph @Users-#Hashtags and of its projections: the 'semantic network', whose nodes are hashtags, and the 'users interest network', whose nodes are users. In the first insta  ...[more]

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