The Psychology of Sharing
We share a lot online, almost to the point where it feels excessive. Is it vanity, self-expression, or more?
It turns out there isn’t just one type of sharer on the Internet. People share information with others for a number of reasons, at various times during the day, and with differing intents. And people even choose not to share things they’re too embarrassed or scared to share.
To understand why people share online, we pulled up all of the latest and greatest studies on the arena. Here’s what we found.
How Twitter Proves That Place Matters
By Richard Florida for the Atlantic
Twitter is a fascinating place to explore not just the connectedness of people but of places. In a previous post, I mapped the locations of the 500 leading “Twitterati.” When it comes to celebrities, the Twitterverse is still overwhelmingly American: almost three quarters of them are located in the United States. Los Angeles, with its large celebrity contingent, took the top spot among metros, followed by New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta.
A new study, “The Geography of Twitter Networks,” by my University of Toronto colleagues Yuri Takhteyev, Barry Wellman and Anatoliy Gruzd from Dalhousie University takes a far more detailed look at the geography of Twitter and what it can tell us about the nature of interaction and proximity in the Internet age. Many predicted the rise of the Internet and of social media would annihilate distance and overcome the constraints of place by allowing people to communicate and build virtual communities. But the fact of the matter is Twitter actually works with and reinforces the power of place.
