Charting closed-loop collective cultural decisions: from book best sellers and music downloads to Twitter hashtags and Reddit comments

Abstract

Charts are used to measure relative success for a large variety of cultural items. Traditional music charts have been shown to follow self-organizing principles with regard to the distribution of item lifetimes, the on-chart residence times. Here we examine if this observation holds also for (a) music streaming charts (b) book best-seller lists and (c) for social network activity charts, such as Twitter hashtags and the number of comments Reddit postings receive. We find that charts based on the active production of items, like commenting, are more likely to be influenced by external factors, in particular by the 24 h day–night cycle. External factors are less important for consumption-based charts (sales, downloads), which can be explained by a generic theory of decision-making. In this view, humans aim to optimize the information content of the internal representation of the outside world, which is logarithmically compressed. Further support for information maximization is argued to arise from the comparison of hourly, daily and weekly charts, which allow to gauge the importance of decision times with respect to the chart compilation period.

Time pressure reduces misinformation discrimination ability but does not alter response bias

“…A growing body of research has started to suggest that various parts of our social lives are speeding up, a phenomenon referred to as social acceleration 1 – 3 . Social media is no exception here.…”

“…Acceleration has also been observed at the level of the individual, with later-joining Twitter cohorts being more active (e.g., posting more tweets over time) and switching their focus to new topics more quickly 7 . These accelerating online dynamics are likely to be driven by the increasing production and consumption of content: Social media users are consuming ever more content like news in ever shorter time spans 2 , 3 , 8 .…”

“…Acceleration has also been observed at the level of the individual, with laterjoining Twitter cohorts being more active (e.g., posting more tweets over time) and switching their focus to new topics more quickly 7 . These accelerating online dynamics are likely to be driven by the increasing production and consumption of content: Social media users are consuming ever more content like news in ever shorter time spans 2,3,8 .The psychological implications of this information overload 9 are largely unclear, especially with respect to people's ability to detect misinformation online. With increasing numbers of people sourcing and sharing news on social media 10 , there is growing public and scholarly concern surrounding the digital spread of misinformation [11][12][13][14] .…”

Time Pressure Reduces Misinformation Discrimination Ability But Does Not Alter Response Bias

“…A growing body of research has started to suggest that various parts of our social lives are speeding up, a phenomenon referred to as social acceleration [1][2][3] . Social media is no exception here.…”

“…Acceleration has also been observed at the level of the individual, with later-joining Twitter cohorts being more active (e.g., posting more tweets over time) and switching their focus to new topics more quickly 7 . These accelerating online dynamics are likely to be driven by the increasing production and consumption of content: Social media users are consuming ever more content like news in ever shorter time spans 2,3,8 .…”