Social media

Using certain algorithms to analyze in which time intervals messages are issued from a Twitter account, it is possible to differentiate whether the issuer is a person, a company or a computer program, regardless of the language used and the content of the tweet, according to a study from Imperial College London (UK) which publishes PLOS ONE magazine.

A study carried out by American researchers has revealed the enormous power of social networks as a tool to promote organ donation. In his experiments, a campaign through the social network Facebook managed to increase the number of organ donors 21 times in a single day in the United States. The results of this work have been published in the American Journal of Transplantation.

The verb 'tweet', as used in the microblogging social network Twitter, has just been accepted by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), considered the most scholarly and comprehensive dictionary in the English language. The new edition of the OED, which was released last Friday after its quarterly renewal, defines 'tweet' as "posting a message on the social network Twitter" or also "using Twitter regularly."

A study carried out by scientists from the University of Illinois and published in the scientific journal First Monday on "the geography of Twitter" reveals that the city that generates the most tweets in the world is Jakarta (2.86%), followed by New York (2.65), Sao Paulo (2.62), Kuala Lumpur (2.10) and, in fifth position, Paris (2.03). The rest of the top ten is for Istanbul (1.60), London (1.57), Rio de Janeiro (1.39), Chicago (1.28) and, in tenth position, Madrid (1.17). The analysis is based on 150 billion georeferenced messages sent through the microblogging platform. Tweets sent without data on the user's location were not included in the study.

At Ohio State University they have come to the conclusion that the photo we use on our Facebook profile is all that another user needs to form an impression of us. That is, the words with which it is described or the messages it publishes are not taken into account when evaluating how a person is on social networks, explains Brandon Van Der Heide in the Journal of Communication. In their experiments they found, among other things, that if a person uses a photograph as a profile image socializing with friends, even if they write that they are an "introverted" person, or that "they feel happier locked up in their habituation with a book", those who visit your profile identify and describe you as outgoing.

Parents closely follow the activity of their teenage children on Facebook and other social networks, according to a recent study by the Pew Research Center in the United States.

What is the potential of social networks like Twitter and Facebook in coordinating people? According to an international study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), in which scientists from the Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) participate, mobilization through social networks in natural disasters, political campaigns, health emergencies, etc. it is fast but has certain limits. And although they can be a very useful tool when coordinating people in critical situations, they have found that the risk of failure of such a strategy is high.

Change.org is an online activism platform. The idea is very simple: if you want to promote a change to improve your environment, you publish your request and ask Internet users for support. And if you get significant support, you may change what you don't like. Change.org was born in 2007. It has more than 20 million users in 196 countries, and Spaniards are among the most active, according to Francisco Polo, director of Change.org Spain. The platform won the iRedes Institutional Category Award at the III Ibero-American Congress of Social Networks "for breaking the digital barrier and being recognized on the street as a useful instrument to generate changes, as well as for the enormous diffusion achieved by its campaigns."