Economic Correlates of Diversity and Inequality in Online Social Networks

• In Event: 4350 - Computational Sociology (Co-sponsored with Mathematical Sociology)

Abstract

We investigate the theoretical puzzles regarding the relationship between the distribution of network positions and the economy through individual- and country-level analyses of Twitter communication networks. Constructing within-country Twitter communication networks, we measure each user's network social capital by well-known network metrics of network constraint and Shannon entropy. Through an analysis of housing price and network position for a sample of U.S. Twitter users, we first establish the validity of using Twitter communication networks as a proxy for measuring network social capital. We then use a larger sample of Twitter users across 85 countries and combine it with national economic indicators of per capita GDP and income inequality to show that the diversity of individuals' network positions as well as the inequality in the distribution of those positions at the country level both correlate with national indicators of economic development and income distribution.

Authors

• Patrick Park, University of Michigan

• Minsu Park, Cornell University

• Michael W. Macy, Cornell University