The Topology of a Discussion: The #Occupy Case

Below:  Top hashtags in the three phases of the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

Each square corresponds to one specific period of movement and report the top most used hashtags in the period. The size of the square around each hashtag is proportional to the number of times it has been used.

Below: Evolution of the users’ participation to the semantic communities during Occupy Wall Street Movement.

On the left end we have the hashtags used in the communities in the first phase of the movement; on the right end we have the same at the end of the movement. Connecting lines represent the flows of users whose interests in the discussion have changed during the period of the movement as represented from the different types of hashtags they use (i.e. users using hashtags in community i at the beginning and in community j at the end).

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'.

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'.

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.

Read me at: http://goo.gl/T7ZuK0

Via: 

Floriana Gargiulo

NaxYs, University of Namur, Namur, Belgium

Jacopo Bindi

DISAT and Center for computational Sciences, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy

Andrea Apolloni

Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom