Unraveling the Origin of Social Bursts in Collective Attention

Understand

In the era of social media, every day billions of individuals produce content in socio-technical systems resulting in a deluge of information.

• However, human attention is a limited resource and it is increasingly challenging to consume the most suitable content for one's interests.
• In fact, the complex interplay between individual and social activities in social systems overwhelmed by information results in bursty activity of collective attention which are still poorly understood.
• Here, we tackle this challenge by analyzing the online activity of millions of users in a popular microblogging platform during exceptional events, from NBA Finals to the elections of Pope Francis and the discovery of gravitational waves.