A Study of Homophily on Social Media

Abstract

Similarity breeds connections, the principle of homophily, has been well studied in existing sociology literature. Several studies have observed this phenomenon by conducting surveys on human subjects. These studies have concluded that new ties are formed between similar individuals. This phenomenon has been used to explain several socio-psychological concepts such as segregation, community development, social mobility, etc. However, due to the nature of these studies and limitations because of involvement of human subjects, conclusions from these studies are not easily extensible in online social media. Social media, which is becoming the infinite space for interactions, has exceeded all the expectations in terms of growth, for reasons beyond human comprehension. New ties are formed in social media in the same way that they emerge in the real world. However, given the differences between real-world and online social media, do the same factors that govern the construction of new ties in the real world also govern the construction of new ties in social media? In other words, does homophily exist in social media? In this chapter, the authors study this highly significant question and propose a systematic approach by studying two online social media sites, BlogCatalog and Last.fm, and report our findings along with some interesting observations.

Identifying Central Individuals on the Internet: A Case Study with Food-Related Weblogs

“…In addition, the results obtained from such research are potentially much more conclusive and generalizable, given the possibility of reaching a greater number of individuals. Some of these studies can be consulted in Adamic and Adar (2003), Fiore and Donath (2005), Nowak and Rauh (2005), Crandall et al (2008), and Bisgin, Agarwal, and Xu (2012).…”

Creation and growth of online social network

“…Although social networks are one of the categories of complex networks, Newman and Park claim that the they differ from most other types of networks [20] because: (i) they show high clustering and/or network transitivity, and (ii) they show positive correlations also called assortative mixing between the degrees of adjacent vertices [19]. A relatively recent trend in the complex networked systems research is the exploration of social media that allow users to interact and collaborate with each other in many different ways, both directly and indirectly [3,21,26]. For instance, a social networking service allows to publish photos, comment and tag them, mark them as favourite, add other user to contact list, join user groups, comment profiles or photos, categorize photos, post in topics, etc.…”

“…All triad structures are presented in the Figure 5. Note that the sets of triads (2,3,5) and (4,6,7) are topologically equivalent. However, in the analysis the decision was made to distinguish them as the nodes in the social networks are labelled.…”

Social media strategy for online service brands

“…'likes' or 'follows') of marketers' endeavors on social media can actually add to the social clout, and thus efficacy, of those attempts at relationship-building, as individuals (customers) tend to follow the lead of similar others (Cialdini, 2001). The concept of homophily in social networks (McPherson, Smith-Lovin, & Cook, 2001) applies fittingly to social media use (Bisgin, Agarwal, & Xu, 2012), as customers will be predisposed to liking, following or otherwise engaging with brands online if similar others and peers have done so previously, as this intuitively validates the marketing message and value of the customer-brand relationship.…”