Title
Structures of broken ties: exploring unfollow behavior on twitter
Abstract
This study investigates unfollow behavior in Twitter, i.e. people removing others from their Twitter following lists. Considering the interdependency and dynamics of unfollow decisions, we use actor-oriented modeling (SIENA) to examine the impacts of reciprocity, status, embeddedness, homophily, and informativeness on tie dissolution. Focusing on ordinary users in tightly-knitted user groups, the results show that relational properties play key roles in the emergence of unfollow behavior: mutual following relations and common followees reduce the likelihood of unfollowing. And unfollow tends to be reciprocal: when a user is unfollowed by someone, he or she will unfollow back. However, there is no evidence of the impacts of homophily based on common interests and informativeness of interactions. The findings suggest that Twitter has many heterogeneous user groups and relational and informational factors may not be applicable universally.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1145/2441776.2441875
CSCW
Keywords
Field
DocType
broken tie,relational property,common followees,mutual following relation,common interest,ordinary user,unfollow decision,tightly-knitted user group,unfollow behavior,twitter following list,heterogeneous user group,snowball sampling
Social psychology,Interdependence,Reciprocal,Internet privacy,Homophily,Knowledge management,Psychology,Reciprocity (social psychology),Embeddedness,Snowball sampling
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
15
0.67
8
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Bo Xu1306.47
Yun Huang211811.29
Haewoon Kwak34487267.95
Noshir S. Contractor450761.05