Urban Legend Propagation Ian Dennis Miller 2018-11-08 Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 1 / 88
Introduction Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 2 / 88
Executive Summary Urban Legends propagate farther when Experimental control is inversely they are disgusting proportional to ecological validity. phenomenon known as emotional The more controlled an experiment is, selection the less is resembles real life. We replicate this finding with a Lack of ecological validity is a frequent simulation study criticism in the psychological sciences. We conduct a new study to simulate We want both: control and validity. urban legend propagation in a larger Perhaps these are separate, network complementary steps in a research epistemology. The current work offers two major contributions: Applied research on the topic of urban legend propagation Fundamental science of computational social modeling Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 3 / 88
Overview Background Urban Legends A Study of Urban Legends Computational Modeling Methods Results Discussion Conclusion Figure 1: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Power_8_mandelbulb_fractal_overview.jpg Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 4 / 88
Background: Urban Legends Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 5 / 88
Background: Urban Legends Serial Reproduction Task Communication Networks Contagion and Epidemiology Memes Social Transmission Cascades Urban Legends Emotional Selection Figure 2: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Harpy.PNG Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 6 / 88
Serial Reproduction Task Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. (Bartlett, 1932) first scientific study of “word of mouth” chains also tested images, separately kids game: “telephone operator” A tells B, who tells C, who tells D, . . . serial reproduction is a useful research method Figure 3: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Telephone_operators,_1952.jpg Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 7 / 88
Communication vocabulary for discussing communication (Shannon, 1948) transmitter receiver message channel information theory signal-to-noise ratio uncertainty (entropy) Figure 4: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Shannon_communication_system.svg Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 8 / 88
Networks Graph theory and networks literature Serial reproduction task is : a communication network represented as a graph network topology: directed, acyclic graph with k nodes each node: in-degree of 1 out-degree of 1 except first and last nodes Figure 5: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Hierarchical_Communication_Network.png Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 9 / 88
Contagion and Epidemiology contagion : transmission by contact not choice pathogenic contagion epidemiology, public health formal analysis; modeling emotional contagion “emotional state-matching of a subject with an object” (De Waal, 2008) basis for complex social processes social contagion social influence (Asch, 1956) false memories (Roediger, et al, 2001) Figure 6: De Waal. (2008). Putting the Altruism Back into Altruism Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 10 / 88
Memes The Selfish Gene, ch. 7 (Dawkins, 1976) meme : unit of culture repeatable can be mutated viral social network phenomena information cascades meme epidemics, contagions? image macro : image with embedded word overlay memes are what is transmitted the meme is the message content/data, for modeling purposes Figure 7: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: I_can_has_cheezburger.jpg Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 11 / 88
Social Transmission transmitted via network “word of mouth” online social media personal communications overheard on the street broadcast media influences previous research has looked at: Emotional Selection (Heath, 2001) Arousal (Berger, 2009) User Generated Content (Miller, 2012) Figure 8: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: NetworkSociality1.jpg Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 12 / 88
Cascades cascade : a time series of sharing events term used by social network scientists track a media object (meme) as it propagates content-oriented, as opposed to people-oriented examples of cascades: dancing baby i can haz cheezburger Arab Spring (on Twitter) Gangnam Style music video ice bucket challenge Figure 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File: DancingBaby.jpg Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 13 / 88
Urban Legends stories passed via word of mouth often with a moral or safety message Phantom Anesthetist (Johnson, 1945) examined “mental epidemic” “hysterical” contagious laughter Best & Horiuchi (1985) no evidence for “Halloween sadism” Big Foot Legend transmission not serial in “real world,” degree is much higher Figure 10: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: than one Urban_Legends_City_logo.jpg Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 14 / 88
Emotional Selection When content elicits an emotion in the reader affects the reader’s behavior likelihood to share that content Heath et al (2001): disgusting urban legends more widespread across urban legends websites elicit more willingness in participants to share Figure 11: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Fragile_Emotion_cropped.jpg Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 15 / 88
Recap: Urban Legends serial reproduction task : a research social transmission : the human paradigm for studying word of mouth behavioral ecosystem of meme sharing communication : the process of cascade : the “life history” of a viral transmitting a message from sender to meme receiver urban legend : stories re-told via word of networks of communication: graph mouth theory applied to communication emotional selection : story propagation contagion : transmission by contact; is affected by emotion epidemiology models altogether, this provides a precise memes : ever-changing content that is vocabulary to describe Eriksson & Coultas (2014) copied and transmitted the current work Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 16 / 88
Reviewing a study on Urban Legends Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 17 / 88
Reviewing a study on Urban Legends Eriksson & Coultas (2014): Emotional selection in urban legend propagation. study 2: rate disgusting urban legends study 3: read stories and share to a partner Setting the stage for the current work Figure 12: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Bigfoot!_(19720317769).jpg Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 18 / 88
Disgusting Stories Eriksson & Coultas (2014) break down transmission into 3 stages: receive, encode-retrieve, transmit used Serial Reproduction paradigm one person tells the next, in sequence “fizzles” in the lab; “viral” cascades cannot manifest paradox: in “real world,” urban legends survive. I was going to run a very similar in 2014 finding this study was a time-saver! Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 19 / 88
Eriksson & Coultas Study 2: choose-to-transmit (1/2) does disgust affect how funny a story is? Yes 80 participants from mturk provided ratings of urban legends each participant rated 4 stories high/low disgust assigned with Latin square reported disgust, amusement, “pass-along” Figure 13: Story topics are manipulated to create high/low disgust versions. Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 20 / 88
Eriksson & Coultas Study 2: choose-to-transmit (2/2) predicting “pass-along ratings” how likely they are to share the story disgust is a significant driver of the effect replicates Heath et al (2001) NB: created model of urban legend transmission maximum likelihood estimates are interpreted as slopes on average, sharing is unlikely (intercept is -0.86) but disgusting stories can counteract Figure 14: Eriksson & Coultas (2014); p. 14 much of this (0.79) Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 21 / 88
Eriksson & Coultas Study 3: Receive and Transmit (1/2) emotional selection during reading? yes study 3 limited to: choose-to-receive, choose-to-transmit stories are on paper; encode-retrieve not part of it 80 mturk participants 40 “chains” consisting of 2 “generations” 2 steps per generation: read and transmit read 4 stories; choose to share what they read Figure 15: Flowchart depiction of research method used in Eriksson & Coultas Study 3. Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 22 / 88
Eriksson & Coultas Study 3: Receive and Transmit (2/2) track the number of stories retained after 2 generations at each stage and each generation, fewer are retained high disgust stories are retained at a higher rate, retained longer by end of step 4, no low-disgust stories retained emotional selection during both read and transmit Figure 16: Eriksson & Coultas (2014); p. 17 Ian Dennis Miller Urban Legend Propagation 2018-11-08 23 / 88
Recommend
More recommend
