{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,13]],"date-time":"2026-01-13T08:29:50Z","timestamp":1768292990710,"version":"3.49.0"},"reference-count":29,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2013,4,15]],"date-time":"2013-04-15T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1365984000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/3.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Information"],"abstract":"<jats:p>It has been found in a variety of face-to-face networks that diffusion of information, behaviors and sentiments extend up to two to four degrees of distance from the original source. This regularity has been popularized as the three degrees of influence phenomenon. Prior works have suggested a number of possible explanations to this pattern. In this paper, we study it in the context of an online network. We find similar results in this online setting to those already found offline. However, our approach suggests that two of the previously proposed explanations (increasing instability of connections at greater distances from the source and simple information decay) should not be central to explain the pattern.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/info4020171","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2013,4,16]],"date-time":"2013-04-16T03:19:09Z","timestamp":1366082349000},"page":"171-181","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":10,"title":["Social Contagion and Cascade Behaviors on Twitter"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"4","author":[{"given":"Jorge","family":"Fabrega","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Government, Adolfo Ibanez University, Diagonal Las Torres 2640, Penalolen,  Santiago 7941169, Chile"},{"name":"Mac Iver 524, suite 1405, Santiago, 8320076, Chile"}]},{"given":"Pablo","family":"Paredes","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Mac Iver 524, suite 1405, Santiago, 8320076, Chile"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2013,4,15]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"350","DOI":"10.1086\/209118","article-title":"Social ties and word-of-mouth referral behavior","volume":"14","author":"Reingen","year":"1987","journal-title":"J. Consum. Res."},{"key":"ref_2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"756","DOI":"10.1287\/mnsc.1040.0349","article-title":"Collaborative networks as determinants of knowledge diffusion patterns","volume":"51","author":"Singh","year":"2005","journal-title":"Manag. Sci."},{"key":"ref_3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"370","DOI":"10.1056\/NEJMsa066082","article-title":"The spread of obesity in a large social network over 32 years","volume":"357","author":"Christakis","year":"2007","journal-title":"New Engl. J. Med."},{"key":"ref_4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"2249","DOI":"10.1056\/NEJMsa0706154","article-title":"The collective dynamics of smoking in a large social network","volume":"358","author":"Christakis","year":"2008","journal-title":"New Engl. J. Med."},{"key":"ref_5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.7326\/0003-4819-152-7-201004060-00007","article-title":"The spread of alcohol consumption behavior in a large social network","volume":"152","author":"Rosenquist","year":"2010","journal-title":"Ann. Int. Med."},{"key":"ref_6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1136\/bmj.a2338","article-title":"Dynamic spread of happiness in a large social network: Longitudinal analysis over 20 years in the Framingham Heart Study","volume":"337","author":"Fowler","year":"2008","journal-title":"Br. Med. J."},{"key":"ref_7","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"388","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jocs.2012.05.001","article-title":"Twitter reciprocal reply networks exhibit assortativity with respect to happiness","volume":"3","author":"Bliss","year":"2012","journal-title":"J. Comput. Sci."},{"key":"ref_8","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"977","DOI":"10.1037\/a0016076","article-title":"Alone in the crowd: The structure and spread of loneliness in a large social network","volume":"97","author":"Cacioppo","year":"2009","journal-title":"J. Personal. Soc. Psychol."},{"key":"ref_9","unstructured":"Christakis, N., and Fowler, J. Social contagion theory: Examining dynamic social networks and human behavior. Available online:http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1109.5235\/."},{"key":"ref_10","unstructured":"Noel, H., and Nyhan, B. The \"Unfriending\" problem: The consequences of homophily in friendship retention for causal estimates of social influence. Available online:http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1009.3243\/."},{"key":"ref_11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1400","DOI":"10.1016\/j.jhealeco.2008.07.001","article-title":"Estimating peer effects on health in social networks: A response to cohen-cole and fletcher; Trogdon, Nonnemaker, Pais","volume":"27","author":"Christakis","year":"2008","journal-title":"J. Health Econ."},{"key":"ref_12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"337","DOI":"10.1126\/science.1215842","article-title":"Identifying influential and susceptible members of social networks","volume":"337","author":"Aral","year":"2012","journal-title":"Science"},{"key":"ref_13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Shoham, D.A., Tong, L., Lamberson, P.J., Auchincloss, A.H., Zhang, J., Dugas, L., Kaufman, J.S., Cooper, R.S., and Luke, A. (2012). An actor-based model of social network influence on adolescent body size, screen time, and playing sports. PLoS One.","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0039795"},{"key":"ref_14","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"295","DOI":"10.1038\/nature11421","article-title":"A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization","volume":"489","author":"Bond","year":"2012","journal-title":"Nature"},{"key":"ref_15","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Weng, L., Flammini, A., Vespignani, A., and Menczer, F. (2012). Competition among memes in a world with limited attention. Sci. Rep.","DOI":"10.1038\/srep00335"},{"key":"ref_16","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Boyd, D., Golder, S., and Lotan, G. (2010, January 5\u20138). Tweet, tweet, retweet: Conversational aspects of retweeting on twitter. Proceeding of System Sciences (HICSS), 2010 43rd Hawaii International Conference, Honolulu, HI, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/HICSS.2010.412"},{"key":"ref_17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Suh, B., Hong, L., Pirolli, P., and Chi, E.H. (2010, January 20\u201322). Want to be retweeted? Large scale analytics on factors impacting retweet in twitter network. Proceeding of IEEE 2nd International Conference on Social Computing (SocialCom), Minneapolis, MN, USA.","DOI":"10.1109\/SocialCom.2010.33"},{"key":"ref_18","unstructured":"Macskassy, S., and Michelson, M. (2011, January 17\u201321). Why do people retweet? Anti-homophily wins the day. Proceeding of the 5th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, Barcelona, Spain."},{"key":"ref_19","unstructured":"Petrovic, S., Osborne, M., and Lavrenko, V. (2011, January 17\u201321). RT to Win! Predicting message propagation in twitter. Proceeding of the 5th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, Barcelona, Spain."},{"key":"ref_20","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Goel, S., Watts, D., and Goldstein, D. (2012, January 4\u20138). The structure of online diffusion networks. Proceeding of the 13th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, Valencia, Spain.","DOI":"10.1145\/2229012.2229058"},{"key":"ref_21","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Van Liere, D. (2010, January 13\u201316). How far does a tweet travel? Information brokers in the Twitterverse. Proceeding of the International Workshop on Modeling Social Media, Toronto, ON, Canada.","DOI":"10.1145\/1835980.1835986"},{"key":"ref_22","unstructured":"More details are available at http:\/\/www.buzzfeed.com\/jwherrman\/twitter-cofounder-suggests-a-replacement-for-the-f\/ (accessed on 7 April 2013)."},{"key":"ref_23","unstructured":"Azman, N., Millard, D., and Weal, M. Patterns of implicit and non-follower retweet propagation: Investigating the role of applications and hashtags. Available online:http:\/\/journal.webscience.org\/517\/."},{"key":"ref_24","unstructured":"Ghosh, R., Surachawala, T., and Lerman, K. Entropy-based classification of \"Retweeting\" activity on Twitter. Available online:http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1106.0346\/."},{"key":"ref_25","unstructured":"Apigee Homepage. Available online:http:\/\/apigee.com."},{"key":"ref_26","unstructured":"Code used and more details are available at https:\/\/bitbucket.org\/jorgefabrega\/threedegrees\/ (accessed on 7 April 2013)."},{"key":"ref_27","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Grabowicz, P.A., Ramasco, J.J., Moro, E., Pujol, J.M., and Eguiluz, V.M. (2012). Social features of online networks: The strength of intermediary ties in online social media. PLoS One.","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pone.0029358"},{"key":"ref_28","unstructured":"Index of threedegrees. Available online:http:\/\/www.nodoschile.org\/threedegrees\/."},{"key":"ref_29","unstructured":"Threedegrees. Available online:https:\/\/bitbucket.org\/jorgefabrega\/threedegrees\/."}],"container-title":["Information"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2078-2489\/4\/2\/171\/pdf","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,11]],"date-time":"2025-10-11T21:46:08Z","timestamp":1760219168000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.mdpi.com\/2078-2489\/4\/2\/171"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2013,4,15]]},"references-count":29,"journal-issue":{"issue":"2","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2013,6]]}},"alternative-id":["info4020171"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/info4020171","relation":{},"ISSN":["2078-2489"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2078-2489","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2013,4,15]]}}}