Inferring Information Reception Velocity from Network Positions in Microblogs: A Quantitative Study

According to social network research, network actors' benefits from being structurally embedded in a social network are not uniform but depend on the actors' specific network positions. This study evaluates whether users who occupy specific positions in a microblog follower network receive information that diffuses through mention and repost ties in the associated microblog faster than users who do not occupy such positions. Specifically, we focus on two network positions related to structural capital: outdegree centrality and structural hole closure. To explore this assumption, we conducted a regression analysis with the help of a large dataset that quantifies the diffusion of news and rumors about the discovery of the Higgs-boson particle on Twitter. Our study reveals that in microblogs, the two aforementioned network positions related to structural capital are associated with faster information reception velocity in microblogs. These findings indicate that network positions typically attributed to structural capital in other social network areas also yield benefits in the context of microblogs. According to our findings, microblog users should build a large network of followed users, preferably from disjunct network clusters.