Semantic homophily in online communication: Evidence from Twitter

Concretely, we tackle a computer-mediated communication network (based on Twitter mentions) and a particular type of assortative mixing that can be inferred from the semantic features of communication content that we term semantic homophily. Our work, to the best of our knowledge, is the first to offer an in-depth analysis on semantic homophily in a communication network and the interplay between them. We quantify diverse levels of semantic homophily, identify the semantic aspects that are the drivers of observed homophily and show insights in its temporal evolution. By analyzing these mechanisms we increase understanding on what are the semantic aspects that shape and how they shape the human computer-mediated communication. In addition, our analysis framework presented on this concrete case can be easily adapted, extended and applied on other type of social networks and for different types of homophily.