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However, very little work has explored another potentially important role, that of creating opportunities for people to interact and facilitating conversation between them. These individuals bring people together and act as social catalysts. In this paper, we test for the presence of social catalysts on the online social network Facebook. We first identify posts that have spurred conversations between the poster's friends and summarize the characteristics of such posts. We then aggregate the number of catalyzed comments at the poster level, as a measure of the individual's \"catalystness.\" The top 1% of such individuals account for 31% of catalyzed interactions, although their network characteristics do not differ markedly from others who post as frequently and have a similar number of friends. By collecting survey data, we also validate the behavioral measure of catalystness: a person is more likely to be nominated as a social catalyst by their friends if their posts prompt discussions between other people more frequently. The measure, along with other conversation-related features, is one of the most predictive of a person being nominated as a catalyst. Although influencers and brokers may have gotten more attention for their network positions, our findings provide converging evidence that another important role exists and is recognized in online social networks.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1145\/3476023","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,10,19]],"date-time":"2021-10-19T02:32:07Z","timestamp":1634610727000},"page":"1-20","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1145\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":4,"title":["Social Catalysts: Characterizing People Who Spark Conversations Among Others"],"prefix":"10.1145","volume":"5","author":[{"given":"Martin","family":"Saveski","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Farshad","family":"Kooti","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Facebook, Menlo Park, CA, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Sylvia","family":"Morelli Vitousek","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Facebook, Menlo Park, CA, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Carlos","family":"Diuk","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Facebook, Menlo Park, CA, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Bryce","family":"Bartlett","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Facebook, Menlo Park, CA, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Lada A.","family":"Adamic","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Facebook, Menlo Park, CA, USA"}],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"320","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,10,18]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_2_1_1_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.2307\/4134367"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_2_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/2180861.2180866"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_3_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1126\/science.1215842"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_4_1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1145\/1935826.1935845"},{"key":"e_1_2_1_5_1","volume-title":"The diffusion of microfinance. 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