SKM 2021 – scientific programme

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 8: Dynamics of Social and Adaptive Networks II

SOE 8.1: Talk

Friday, October 1, 2021, 11:15–11:45, H6

Spinning faster and faster: acceleration of collective attention — •Philipp Hövel — University College Cork, Irlenad

Due to the advent of smart phones and other tools of modern communication, news are available in real time and social media reactions spread across the globe in seconds. As a consequence, the public discussion seems to be accelerated and its pace ever increasing. In longitudinal datasets across various domains (online and offline), covering multiple decades, we find significantly increasing gradients and shortened periods in the trajectories of how cultural items receive collective attention. Is this the inevitable conclusion of the way information is disseminated and consumed?

We present a simple mathematical model that is based on Lotka-Volterra dynamics with a memory kernel. The three main mechanisms are imitation/production, saturation/aging and competition. The common resource, for which different topics compete, is the collective attention of the userbase. The numerical time series are able to explain the empirical data remarkably well. Our modeling suggests that the accelerating ups and downs of popular content are driven by increasing production and consumption of content, resulting in a more rapid exhaustion of limited attention resources. In the interplay with competition for novelty, this causes growing turnover rates and individual topics receiving shorter intervals of collective attention.