Comparison of Indicators of Location Homophily Using Twitter Follow Graph

TL;DR

This study investigates location homophily among Twitter users, finding that the ratio of friends to followers is a strong negative indicator of homophily across multiple countries.

Contribution

It identifies the friends-to-followers ratio as a novel and effective indicator of location homophily in Twitter networks, validated across ten countries.

Findings

Friends-to-followers ratio correlates negatively with homophily.

Location homophily varies across countries.

Twitter data supports the indicator's effectiveness.

Abstract

Location homophily is a tendency of Twitter users whose followers tend to be in the same or nearby areas. Intuitively, although users with a higher number of follower relationships might have negative homophily indicators, it is worth consulting actual Twitter data. Moreover, there may be certain functions regarding the numbers of friends and followers that are more directly correlated to the homophily. In this study, the ratio of the number of friends to the number of followers is shown to be a more effective negative indicator of homophily, and the results for 10 different countries are verified.