↓ Skip to main content

The Geospatial Characteristics of a Social Movement Communication Network

Overview of attention for article published in PLOS ONE, March 2013
Altmetric Badge

About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (98th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (97th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
5 news outlets
blogs
1 blog
twitter
52 X users
wikipedia
2 Wikipedia pages
googleplus
6 Google+ users
reddit
2 Redditors

Citations

dimensions_citation
118 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
228 Mendeley
citeulike
3 CiteULike
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
The Geospatial Characteristics of a Social Movement Communication Network
Published in
PLOS ONE, March 2013
DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0055957
Pubmed ID
Authors

Michael D. Conover, Clayton Davis, Emilio Ferrara, Karissa McKelvey, Filippo Menczer, Alessandro Flammini

Abstract

Social movements rely in large measure on networked communication technologies to organize and disseminate information relating to the movements' objectives. In this work we seek to understand how the goals and needs of a protest movement are reflected in the geographic patterns of its communication network, and how these patterns differ from those of stable political communication. To this end, we examine an online communication network reconstructed from over 600,000 tweets from a thirty-six week period covering the birth and maturation of the American anticapitalist movement, Occupy Wall Street. We find that, compared to a network of stable domestic political communication, the Occupy Wall Street network exhibits higher levels of locality and a hub and spoke structure, in which the majority of non-local attention is allocated to high-profile locations such as New York, California, and Washington D.C. Moreover, we observe that information flows across state boundaries are more likely to contain framing language and references to the media, while communication among individuals in the same state is more likely to reference protest action and specific places and times. Tying these results to social movement theory, we propose that these features reflect the movement's efforts to mobilize resources at the local level and to develop narrative frames that reinforce collective purpose at the national level.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 52 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 228 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
United States 9 4%
Hungary 2 <1%
Portugal 2 <1%
Canada 2 <1%
Netherlands 1 <1%
Italy 1 <1%
United Kingdom 1 <1%
Finland 1 <1%
Brazil 1 <1%
Other 4 2%
Unknown 204 89%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 58 25%
Student > Master 44 19%
Researcher 35 15%
Student > Bachelor 17 7%
Student > Doctoral Student 13 6%
Other 42 18%
Unknown 19 8%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Social Sciences 94 41%
Computer Science 40 18%
Arts and Humanities 12 5%
Environmental Science 9 4%
Psychology 7 3%
Other 41 18%
Unknown 25 11%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 91. 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 31 May 2020.
All research outputs
#471,522
of 25,587,485 outputs
Outputs from PLOS ONE
#6,559
of 223,153 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#3,063
of 208,236 outputs
Outputs of similar age from PLOS ONE
#144
of 5,421 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,587,485 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 223,153 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 15.8. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% 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 208,236 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 5,421 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its contemporaries.