How behavioral homophily on social media influences the perception of tie-strengthening within young adults’ personal networks

Abstract

This study examines how social media and information-sharing behavior can influence young adults’ perceptions of changes in tie strength within their own personal networks. By focusing on the extended personal networks (27.56 relationships) of young adults, we show that social media leads them to feel closer to their “friends” whom they think of as exhibiting online behaviors similar to their own. This behavioral homophily mainly stems from frequent reactions between friends, when they like or comment upon each other’s posts. Such homophily is also related to the sharing of political news and entertaining content, which constitute a salient affordance in the “pervasive awareness” of social media and lead users to feel closer to those exhibiting similar content-sharing behavior. This similarity reveals how social media platforms help to shape personal networks over time, particularly by influencing user relationships with weak ties who share similar online behavior.

Information and communication technology, educational attainment, and disparity in health information from one’s personal social network: The J-SHINE 2017 cross-sectional study

“…While previous studies have demonstrated that social ties are more likely to be formed and maintained among homogeneous people, for example, in terms of place of residence and shared social media content [ 46 , 47 ], in this study, peers connecting via SNS showed higher heterophily regarding gender, age, educational attainment, working status, place of residence, hobbies/interests, and values for health than those connecting via other media, especially among respondents with lower educational attainment (data not shown). We assumed that such heterogeneity was effective in facilitating respondents’ access to useful health information.…”

Detecção de Posicionamento e Rotulação Automática de Usuários do Twitter: estudo sobre o embate científico-político no contexto da CPI da Covid-19

“…Partindo-se do princípio da homofilia [McPherson et al 2001, Figeac andFavre 2021], considerou-se que os usuários de cada cluster teriam predominantemente a mesma posic ¸ão (contrária ou a favorável) em relac ¸ão à CPI. Assim, foi realizada a modelagem de tópicos separadamente nos textos dos retweets compartilhados pelos usuários de cada agrupamento majoritário e em cada base coletada.…”

“…A detecc ¸ão de posicionamento tem uma longa tradic ¸ão no domínio dos debates políticos e ideológicos online [Mohammad et al 2016] e a sua aplicabilidade prática permite avaliar a opinião pública, identificar grupos que se cruzam e divergem, e compreender questões de interesse para diferentes comunidades de usuários [Magdy et al 2016]. Estudos recentes sugerem que os usuários da web tendem a polarizar sua opinião [Conover et al 2011] e a formar comunidades a partir de afinidades políticas [Figeac and Favre 2021], seguindo o princípio da homofilia [McPherson et al 2001].…”

Agents seeking long-term access to the wisdom of the crowd reduce immediate decision-making accuracy

“…An individual that chooses to move in a direction opposed to others may find itself isolated for some period of time, and thus faced with making further decisions alone without access to the benefits of collective wisdom. Even without a spatial context, disagreements can fracture groups in contexts where homophily is a factor in determining social connections [16, 17]. Since being in a group allows an agent to access beneficial social information, this provides an incentive to follow the decisions made by others even if an individual has reason to believe that higher immediate rewards are available elsewhere, introducing a trade-off that is ignored by normative mathematical theories of social decision-making that focus on isolated choices.…”