Relation between Rumor-Spreading Behavior in Microblogging and Characteristics of Personal Networks

Abstract

Rumors can easily spread on the microblogging service Twitter in the form of retweets, which are tweets that a user has forwarded to his/her followers. This study investigated the social network characteristics of Twitter users who retweeted rumors concerning the Great East Japan Earthquake. We targeted not only the users who spread the rumor that was delivered to their timeline but also those who did not retweet the rumor. Moreover, we investigated each personal network of the user and his/her followings and followers on Twitter, including the set of connections between them. Consequently, we found that the users who spread the rumors are characterized by lower centrality (lower degree and betweenness) and lower reciprocity (fewer mutual follow relationships).