Network redundancy and information diffusion

Abstract

It remains controversial whether community structures in social networks are beneficial or not for information diffusion. This study examined the relationships among four core concepts in social network analysis—network redundancy, information redundancy, ego-alter similarity, and tie strength—and their impacts on information diffusion. By using more than 6,500 representative ego networks containing nearly 1 million following relationships from Twitter, the current study found that (1) network redundancy is positively associated with the probability of being retweeted even when competing variables are controlled for; (2) network redundancy is positively associated with information redundancy, which in turn decreases the probability of being retweeted; and (3) the inclusion of both ego-alter similarity and tie strength can attenuate the impact of network redundancy on the probability of being retweeted.

Keywords

Information diffusion, network redundancy, information redundancy, social network, Twitter

Citation

Liang, H., & Fu, K. W. (2019). Network redundancy and information diffusion: The impacts of information redundancy, similarity, and tie strength. Communication Research, 46(2), 250-272. doi: 10.1177/0093650216682900