Using Facebook Data to Measure Cultural Distance between Countries: The Case of Brazilian Cuisine

Vieira, Carolina Coimbra; Ribeiro, Filipe Nunes; Melo, Pedro O. S. Vaz de; Benevenuto, Fabrí­cio; Zagheni, Emilio

doi:10.1145/3366423.3380082

Cited by 14 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Related approaches that rely on advertisement platforms were also employed to infer the political leaning of thousands of news media outlets in the U.S. [20], to detect the audience targeted by the socially divisive ads run on Facebook in the 2016 U.S. elections [21], to investigate the presence of LGBT communities across the U.S. [10], and to measure cultural assimilation and distance across countries [6,24,27].…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Biased is the Population of Facebook Users? Comparing the Demographics of Facebook Users with Census Data to Generate Correction Factors

Ribeiro¹,

Benevenuto²,

Zagheni³

2020

Preprint

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Censuses and representative sampling surveys around the world are key sources of data to guide government investments and public policies. However, these sources are very expensive to obtain and are collected relatively infrequently. Over the last decade, there has been growing interest in the use of data from social media to complement more traditional data sources. However, social media users are not representative of the general population. Thus, analyses based on social media data require statistical adjustments, like post-stratification, in order to remove the bias and make solid statistical claims. These adjustments are possible only when we have information about the frequency of demographic groups using social media. These data, when compared with official statistics, enable researchers to produce appropriate statistical correction factors. In this paper, we leverage the Facebook advertising platform to compile the equivalent of an aggregate-level census of Facebook users. Our compilation includes the population distribution for seven demographic attributes such as gender, political leaning, and educational attainment at different geographic levels for the U.S. (country, state, and city). By comparing the Facebook counts with official reports provided by the U.S. Census and Gallup, we found very high correlations, especially for political leaning and race. We also identified instances where official statistics may be underestimating population counts as in the case of immigration. We use the information collected to calculate bias correction factors for all computed attributes in order to evaluate the extent to which different demographic groups are more or less represented on Facebook, and to derive the actual distributions for specific audiences of interest. We provide the first comprehensive analysis for assessing biases in Facebook users across several dimensions. This information can be used to generate bias-adjusted population estimates and demographic counts in a timely way and at fine geographic granularity in between data releases of official statistics.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Biased is the Population of Facebook Users? Comparing the Demographics of Facebook Users with Census Data to Generate Correction Factors

Ribeiro¹,

Benevenuto²,

Zagheni³

2020

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…If these manifest variables are chosen with the dependent variable already in mind, as seems inevitable, results may be biased. While several indicators may have a weak theoretical basis (Ortega-Villa & Ley-Garcia, 2018), and some, including our own, are clearly driven more by data availability than by a-priori reasoning (e.g., Vieira et al, 2020), it is also reasonable to suggest that finding suitable empirical data is a particularly serious obstacle in this field.…”

Section: The Notion and Use Of Cultural Distancementioning

confidence: 87%

So Close, So Far. The Cultural Distance of Foreigners in Italy

2021

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The presence of foreigners in a host country is a contentious issue: opponents claim, among other things, that the cultural distance between them and natives is too large to permit integration. However, it is impossible to ascertain whether this is true in the absence of a clear, standardised system for measuring cultural distance (whether it be by nationality, length of stay, educational level, etc.). In this paper, we argue that a recently proposed method, called DBS or Distance Between Strata, fits this scope. We present the methodology under a new light, investigate several of its properties, and apply it to two Italian surveys of 2011–13. Results indicate, first, that no group is homogeneous: Italians, for instance, display a clear North to South gradient. Second, foreigners are not all equally culturally distant from Italian natives: the ranking of their cultural distances largely conforms to expectation. Finally, Italians with a foreign origin are, as expected, close to Italians tout court, which suggests that cultural convergence is taking place.

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“…In a recent study, Facebook data was filtered by geography and interests related to specific cultural traits, providing a collection of massive data on human behaviors that are used to complement traditional cultural metrics ( Obradovich et al, 2020 ). Moreover, Facebook Ads data has been filtered by geography and interest in Brazilian dishes in order to focus on how a foreign culture such as the Brazilian culture is spread around the world ( Vieira et al, 2020 ). In parallel, researchers found that Facebook Ads data can be used to explore the cultural assimilation of Mexican Immigrants by looking at musical preferences.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using social media advertisement data to monitor the gender gap in STEM: opportunities and challenges

Tamime¹,

Weber²

2022

PeerJ Computer Science

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Boosting the number of women and girls entering careers involving STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) is crucial to achieving gender equality, one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Girls and women tend to gravitate away from STEM fields at multiple stages from childhood through mid-career. The leaky pipeline is a metaphor often used to describe the loss of women in STEM and arguably other fields before reaching senior roles. Do interests expressed on social media mirror the leaky pipeline phenomenon? In this article, we collected advertisement data (reach estimates) from Facebook and Instagram disaggregated by US metros, age, gender, and interests related to STEM. We computed the Gender Gap Index (GGI) for each US metro and age group. We found that on Instagram, the GGIs for interest in Science decrease as users’ age increases, suggesting that relatively there is evidence that that women, compared to men, are losing interest in STEM at older ages. In particular, we find that on Instagram, there are plausible relative trends but implausible absolute levels. Nevertheless, is this enough to conclude that online data available from Instagram mirror the leaky pipeline phenomenon? To scrutinize this, we compared the GGIs for an interest in Science with the GGIs for placebo interests unrelated to STEM. We found that the GGIs for placebo interests follow similar age patterns as the GGIs for the interest in Science across US metros. Second, we attempted to control for the time spent on the platform by computing a usage intensity gender ratio based on the difference between daily and monthly active users. This analysis showed that the usage intensity gender ratio is higher among teenagers (13–17 years) than other older age groups, suggesting that teenage girls are more engaged on the platform that teenage boys. We hypothesize that usage intensity differences, rather than inherent interest changes, might create the illusion of a leaky pipeline. Despite the previously demonstrated value and huge potential of social media advertisement data to study social phenomena, we conclude that there is little evidence that this novel data source can measure the decline in interest in STEM for young women in the USA.

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Using Facebook Data to Measure Cultural Distance between Countries: The Case of Brazilian Cuisine

Cited by 14 publications

References 19 publications

How Biased is the Population of Facebook Users? Comparing the Demographics of Facebook Users with Census Data to Generate Correction Factors

How Biased is the Population of Facebook Users? Comparing the Demographics of Facebook Users with Census Data to Generate Correction Factors

So Close, So Far. The Cultural Distance of Foreigners in Italy

Using social media advertisement data to monitor the gender gap in STEM: opportunities and challenges

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