Self-organization on social media: endo-exo bursts and baseline fluctuations

TL;DR

This study analyzes bursting behavior on Twitter, identifying a critical fluctuation threshold that distinguishes endogenous from exogenous bursts, revealing Twitter as an excitable medium and aiding in predicting social media responses.

Contribution

The paper introduces the concept of a critical threshold in baseline fluctuations that differentiates endogenous and exogenous bursts on Twitter, providing new insights into social media dynamics.

Findings

Burst size increases with baseline fluctuation up to a critical threshold.

Above the threshold, burst sizes vary widely, indicating exogenous influence.

All nouns exhibit both endogenous and exogenous burst origins, each with a specific threshold.

Abstract

A salient dynamic property of social media is bursting behavior. In this paper, we study bursting behavior in terms of the temporal relation between a preceding baseline fluctuation and the successive burst response using a frequency time series of 3,000 keywords on Twitter. We found that there is a fluctuation threshold up to which the burst size increases as the fluctuation increases and that above the threshold, there appears a variety of burst sizes. We call this threshold the critical threshold. Investigating this threshold in relation to endogenous bursts and exogenous bursts based on peak ratio and burst size reveals that the bursts below this threshold are endogenously caused and above this threshold, exogenous bursts emerge. Analysis of the 3,000 keywords shows that all the nouns have both endogenous and exogenous origins of bursts and that each keyword has a critical threshold in the baseline fluctuation value to distinguish between the two. Having a threshold for an input value for activating the system implies that Twitter is an excitable medium. These findings are useful for characterizing how excitable a keyword is on Twitter and could be used, for example, to predict the response to particular information on social media.