Wednesday, February 10, 2010

How Do Newspaper Stories Diffuse on the Net?

Speaking of the sociology of the internet...

In "Findings" in yesterday's Science Times John Tierney writes about a University of Pennsylvania study of what newspaper articles people most commonly forward to others. It turns out that science, surprise, and emotional content are big predictors of forwarding. The article, headlined "Will You Be E-Mailing This Column? It’s Awesome" describes a big content analysis study of all the articles people email friends from the New York Times online site. It helps uncover what story characteristics motivate people to share information forward. It grabbed my attention (warning: author horn tooting coming) because it connects with my own work on notification and with a story about my work that Tierney published a few years ago.

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