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International Conference on Complex Networks and their Applications

COMPLEX NETWORKS 2018: Complex Networks and Their Applications VII pp 211–222Cite as

Let’s Talk About Refugees: Network Effects Drive Contributor Attention to Wikipedia Articles About Migration-Related Topics

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Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 813))

Abstract

Contributions by voluntary users are one of the most crucial resources in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. In this paper we propose relational event models to analyze dynamic network effects explaining the allocation of contributor attention to Wikipedia articles about migration-related topics. Among others, we test for the presence of a rich-get-richer effect in which articles edited by many users are likely to receive even more contributions in the future and uncover which users start working on less popular articles. We further analyze local clustering effects in which pairs of users tend to repeatedly collaborate on the same articles as well as interaction between contributions to encyclopedic articles and engagement in associated talk pages. We demonstrate that these network effects that regulate collaborative work in Wikipedia act over and above general popularity of the articles’ topics as revealed by the number of pageviews.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://algo.uni-konstanz.de/software/eventnet/.

  2. 2.

    Eurobarometer 89. http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/.

  3. 3.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Human_migration.

  4. 4.

    https://dumps.wikimedia.org/other/analytics/.

  5. 5.

    https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=survival.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by Swiss National Science Foundation (FNS Project Nr. 100018_150126) and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG Grant Nr. LE 2237/2-1).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

    Jürgen Lerner

  2. University of Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland

    Alessandro Lomi

Authors
  1. Jürgen Lerner
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  2. Alessandro Lomi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alessandro Lomi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Nokia Bell Labs, Cambridge, UK

    Luca Maria Aiello

  2. IUT Lumière, University of Lyon, Bron Cedex, France

    Chantal Cherifi

  3. LE2I UMR CNRS 6306 9, University of Burgundy, Dijon Cedex, France

    Hocine Cherifi

  4. Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Renaud Lambiotte

  5. Department of Computer Science and Technology, The Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Pietro Lió

  6. Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Luis M. Rocha

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Lerner, J., Lomi, A. (2019). Let’s Talk About Refugees: Network Effects Drive Contributor Attention to Wikipedia Articles About Migration-Related Topics. In: Aiello, L., Cherifi, C., Cherifi, H., Lambiotte, R., Lió, P., Rocha, L. (eds) Complex Networks and Their Applications VII. COMPLEX NETWORKS 2018. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 813. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05414-4_17

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