TY - JOUR
T1 - Spread of Risk Information Through Microblogs
T2 - Twitter Users with More Mutual Connections Relay News That is More Dreadful1
AU - Komori, Masashi
AU - Miura, Asako
AU - Matsumura, Naohiro
AU - Hiraishi, Kai
AU - Maeda, Kazutoshi
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Japanese Psychological Association. Published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.
PY - 2021/1
Y1 - 2021/1
N2 - In elucidating the spread of risk information through microblogging, it is important to understand the behaviors of numerous average users, in addition to the activities of authorities. We followed the transmission pathways of 10 actual widely spread tweets concerning several risk information topics, including natural disasters, nuclear disasters, and infectious diseases, and we identified the types of risk that affected retweeting by classifying each tweet based on Slovic's risk-perception model. Furthermore, we examined the types of users who did and did not retweet the information. Users with few connections in the form of followers (i.e., people who are following a user) or followees (people a user is following), or with a low ratio of mutual followers within their connections, had a tendency to retweet a large amount of risk information, regardless of the type of risk involved. On the other hand, users with a high ratio of mutual followers exhibited a greater tendency to retweet risk information when it was perceived as dreadful, though they did not retweet risk information much on the whole. These results suggest that there are two mechanisms by which risk information is spread within the Twitter network: information exchange and social sharing of personal reactions.
AB - In elucidating the spread of risk information through microblogging, it is important to understand the behaviors of numerous average users, in addition to the activities of authorities. We followed the transmission pathways of 10 actual widely spread tweets concerning several risk information topics, including natural disasters, nuclear disasters, and infectious diseases, and we identified the types of risk that affected retweeting by classifying each tweet based on Slovic's risk-perception model. Furthermore, we examined the types of users who did and did not retweet the information. Users with few connections in the form of followers (i.e., people who are following a user) or followees (people a user is following), or with a low ratio of mutual followers within their connections, had a tendency to retweet a large amount of risk information, regardless of the type of risk involved. On the other hand, users with a high ratio of mutual followers exhibited a greater tendency to retweet risk information when it was perceived as dreadful, though they did not retweet risk information much on the whole. These results suggest that there are two mechanisms by which risk information is spread within the Twitter network: information exchange and social sharing of personal reactions.
KW - microblog
KW - personal network
KW - retweet
KW - risk information
KW - risk perception
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U2 - 10.1111/jpr.12272
DO - 10.1111/jpr.12272
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85077400392
VL - 63
SP - 1
EP - 12
JO - Japanese Psychological Research
JF - Japanese Psychological Research
SN - 0021-5368
IS - 1
ER -