How Visibility and Divided Attention Constrain Social Contagion

TL;DR

This study investigates how limited attention and visibility constraints affect the spread of information on Twitter, revealing that rapid decay of visibility and divided attention limit social contagion.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence that visibility and attention constraints significantly restrict information diffusion in social media, especially among highly connected users.

Findings

Retweeting is driven by visibility and effort minimization.

Highly connected users are less likely to propagate tweets.

Rapid decay of tweet visibility limits information spread.

Abstract

How far and how fast does information spread in social media? Researchers have recently examined a number of factors that affect information diffusion in online social networks, including: the novelty of information, users' activity levels, who they pay attention to, and how they respond to friends' recommendations. Using URLs as markers of information, we carry out a detailed study of retweeting, the primary mechanism by which information spreads on the Twitter follower graph. Our empirical study examines how users respond to an incoming stimulus, i.e., a tweet (message) from a friend, and reveals that %retweeting behavior is constrained by a few simple principles. the "principle of least effort" combined with limited attention plays a dominant role in retweeting behavior. Specifically, we observe that users retweet information when it is most visible, such as when it near the top of their Twitter stream. Moreover, our measurements quantify how a user's limited attention is divided among incoming tweets, providing novel evidence that highly connected individuals are less likely to propagate an arbitrary tweet. Our study indicates that the finite ability to process incoming information constrains social contagion, and we conclude that rapid decay of visibility is the primary barrier to information propagation online.