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Homophily in MySpace

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  • Mike Thelwall

Abstract

Social network sites like MySpace are increasingly important environments for expressing and maintaining interpersonal connections, but does online communication exacerbate or ameliorate the known tendency for offline friendships to form between similar people (homophily)? This article reports an exploratory study of the similarity between the reported attributes of pairs of active MySpace Friends based upon a systematic sample of 2,567 members joining on June 18, 2007 and Friends who commented on their profile. The results showed no evidence of gender homophily but significant evidence of homophily for ethnicity, religion, age, country, marital status, attitude towards children, sexual orientation, and reason for joining MySpace. There were also some imbalances: women and the young were disproportionately commenters, and commenters tended to have more Friends than commentees. Overall, it seems that although traditional sources of homophily are thriving in MySpace networks of active public connections, gender homophily has completely disappeared. Finally, the method used has wide potential for investigating and partially tracking homophily in society, providing early warning of socially divisive trends.

Suggested Citation

  • Mike Thelwall, 2009. "Homophily in MySpace," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 60(2), pages 219-231, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamist:v:60:y:2009:i:2:p:219-231
    DOI: 10.1002/asi.20978
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    Cited by:

    1. Judd Antin & Matthew Earp, 2010. "With a little help from my friends: Self‐interested and prosocial behavior on MySpace Music," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 61(5), pages 952-963, May.
    2. Kang, Ju-Young M. & Johnson, Kim K.P., 2015. "F-Commerce platform for apparel online social shopping: Testing a Mowen’s 3M model," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 35(6), pages 691-701.
    3. Elina H. Hwang & Param Vir Singh & Linda Argote, 2015. "Knowledge Sharing in Online Communities: Learning to Cross Geographic and Hierarchical Boundaries," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(6), pages 1593-1611, December.
    4. Stefano Guarino & Enrico Mastrostefano & Massimo Bernaschi & Alessandro Celestini & Marco Cianfriglia & Davide Torre & Lena Rebecca Zastrow, 2021. "Inferring Urban Social Networks from Publicly Available Data," Future Internet, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-45, April.
    5. Wang, Yukai & Yang, Zhongkai & Liu, Lanjian & Wang, Xianwen, 2020. "Gender bias in patenting process," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3).
    6. Jalees, Tariq & Tariq, Huma & Zaman, Syed Imran & Alam Kazmi, Syed Hasnain, 2015. "Social Media in Virtual Marketing," MPRA Paper 69868, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 10 Apr 2015.
    7. Zhechao (Charles) Liu & Nima Kordzadeh & Yoris A. Au & Jan G. Clark, 2012. "Investigating the Reciprocal Relationships Within Health Virtual Communities," Working Papers 0007, College of Business, University of Texas at San Antonio.
    8. Lu (Lucy) Yan & Jianping Peng & Yong Tan, 2015. "Network Dynamics: How Can We Find Patients Like Us?," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 26(3), pages 496-512, September.
    9. Jens F. Binder & Alistair G. Sutcliffe, 2014. "The Best of Both Worlds? Online Ties and the Alternating Use of Social Network Sites in the Context of Migration," Societies, MDPI, vol. 4(4), pages 1-17, December.
    10. Marc Esteve-Del-Valle, 2022. "Homophily and Polarization in Twitter Political Networks: A Cross-Country Analysis," Media and Communication, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(2), pages 81-92.
    11. Tianshu Sun & Sean J. Taylor, 2020. "Displaying things in common to encourage friendship formation: A large randomized field experiment," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 237-271, September.
    12. Anikó Tompos & Jawad Abu Khair, 2023. "The Impact of Social Media Relationships on e-WOM in Syria and Hungary," Review of Applied Socio-Economic Research, Pro Global Science Association, vol. 25(1), pages 52-65, June.

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