The Role of Temporal Dynamics in the Effects of Content Innovativeness on Diffusion

• In Event: 3451 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 13. Temporality, History, and Collective Memory

Abstract

Studies of diffusion have long drawn substantial interest from social movement scholars. With the rise in social media, scholars have become increasingly interested in how the nature of content on social media might be related to its dissemination across online social networks. In this paper, we examine how content differentiation affects the spread of a social movement. We argue that the various stages of a protest cycle moderate the relationship between the innovativeness of content related to a movement and the rate of diffusion of the movement. To test our propositions, we adopt methods from natural language processing to conduct a computational analysis of content related to the Black Lives Matter movement on Twitter from May 2016 to July 2016. Our findings show that tweets with less differentiated content are more likely to spread during the initial stage of a protest cycle – which we call the ripening stage – but when the movement gains momentum – entering what we call the frenzy stage – tweets with more differentiated content are more likely to spread.

Authors

• Soomin Sophie Cho, Columbia Business School

• Dan Wang, Columbia University