Using retweets to shape our online persona: A topic modeling approach

Hilah Geva, Gal Oestreicher-Singer, Maytal Saar-Tsechansky

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

Online socializing technologies have given rise to new social behaviors. We focus on the effect of reiteration tool (tools that enable us to redistribute a copy of content that others have posted) on users' online persona building. Specifically, we study retweeting behavior on Twitter and ask: (1) Do users expand the breadth of topics they discuss? (2) Do users change the distribution of the topics they discuss? (3) Does the behaviors of experts differ from those of non-experts? We use data about 2,435 non-expert users, and 415 expert users and the users whom they follow and use LDA topic modeling to derive the topics in both self-tweets and retweets. We find that users rarely add new topics when retweeting and they do not alter significantly the distribution of topics. Also, this tendency is stronger among expert users, indicating that they rely more on their own words for impression management.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publication2016 International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2016
PublisherAssociation for Information Systems
ISBN (Electronic)9780996683135
DOIs
StatePublished - 2016
Event2016 International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2016 - Dublin, Ireland
Duration: 11 Dec 201614 Dec 2016

Publication series

Name2016 International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2016

Conference

Conference2016 International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2016
Country/TerritoryIreland
CityDublin
Period11/12/1614/12/16

Keywords

  • Economics of information systems
  • Social media
  • Social technology

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