Quantifying Information Overload in Social Media and Its Impact on Social Contagions

• DOI: 10.1609/icwsm.v8i1.14549
• Publication Date: 2022-11-01T10:02:51Z
• Authors: Manuel Gomez Rodr...; Krishna Gummadi; Bernhard Schoelkopf
• Keywords: Information Overload; Information flow

Information overload has become an ubiquitous problem in modern society. Social media users and microbloggers receive endless flow of information, often at a rate far higher than their cognitive abilities to process the information. In this paper, we conduct large scale quantitative study information evaluate its impact on dissemination Twitter social site. We model as processing systems that queue incoming according some policies, from unknown rates decide forward other users. show how timestamped data about tweets received forwarded by can be used uncover key properties queueing policies estimate limits. Such understanding users' behaviors allows us infer whether what extent suffer overload. Our analysis provides empirical evidence limits for prevalence overloading. The most active popular are ones overloaded. Moreover, find which impacts behavior, including they prioritize different sources, much process, quickly Finally, susceptibility user contagions depends crucially she receives An exposure piece it idea, convention or product, is less effective rates, meaning need more exposures adopt particular contagion.