We present the continuous-time evolution of an online organism network from birth to death which crosses all organizational and temporal scales, from individual components through to the mesoscopic and entire system scale. These continuous-time data reveal a lifespan driven by punctuated, real-time co-evolution of the structural and functional networks. Aging sees these structural and functional networks gradually diverge in terms of their small-worldness and eventually their connectivity. Dying emerges as an extended process associated with the formation of large but disjoint functional sub-networks together with an increasingly detached core. Our mathematical model quantifies the very different impacts that interventions will have on the overall lifetime, period of initial growth, peak of potency, and duration of old age, depending on when and how they are administered. In addition to their direct relevance to online extremism, our findings may offer insight into aging in other network systems of comparable complexity for which extensive in vivo data is not yet available.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 14. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 30 July 2018.
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#3,282,857
of 32,973,893 outputs
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#28,897
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Outputs of similar age
#52,489
of 363,031 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Scientific Reports
#788
of 4,345 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 32,973,893 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 90th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 178,744 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 18.2. This one has done well, scoring higher than 83% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 363,031 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 85% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 4,345 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 81% of its contemporaries.
