%0 Conference Paper %1 Baeza-Yates:2015:WCW:2700171.2791056 %A Baeza-Yates, Ricardo %A Saez-Trumper, Diego %B Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Hypertext &\#38; Social Media %C New York, NY, USA %D 2015 %I ACM %K content crowd few generation toread wisdom %P 69--74 %R 10.1145/2700171.2791056 %T Wisdom of the Crowd or Wisdom of a Few?: An Analysis of Users' Content Generation %U http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2700171.2791056 %X In this paper we analyze how user generated content (UGC) is created, challenging the well known it wisdom of crowds concept. Although it is known that user activity in most settings follow a power law, that is, few people do a lot, while most do nothing, there are few studies that characterize well this activity. In our analysis of datasets from two different social networks, Facebook and Twitter, we find that a small percentage of active users and much less of all users represent 50% of the UGC. We also analyze the dynamic behavior of the generation of this content to find that the set of most active users is quite stable in time. Moreover, we study the social graph, finding that those active users area a highly connected among them. This implies that most of the wisdom comes from a few users challenging the independence assumption needed to have a wisdom of crowds. We also address the content that is never seen by any people (the digital desert), which challenges the assumption that the content of every person should be taken in account in the collective decision. At the end this is not surprising, as the Web is a reflection of our own society, where economical or political power also is in the hands of minorities %@ 978-1-4503-3395-5

@inproceedings{Baeza-Yates:2015:WCW:2700171.2791056, abstract = {In this paper we analyze how user generated content (UGC) is created, challenging the well known it wisdom of crowds concept. Although it is known that user activity in most settings follow a power law, that is, few people do a lot, while most do nothing, there are few studies that characterize well this activity. In our analysis of datasets from two different social networks, Facebook and Twitter, we find that a small percentage of active users and much less of all users represent 50% of the UGC. We also analyze the dynamic behavior of the generation of this content to find that the set of most active users is quite stable in time. Moreover, we study the social graph, finding that those active users area a highly connected among them. This implies that most of the wisdom comes from a few users challenging the independence assumption needed to have a wisdom of crowds. We also address the content that is never seen by any people (the digital desert), which challenges the assumption that the content of every person should be taken in account in the collective decision. At the end this is not surprising, as the Web is a reflection of our own society, where economical or political power also is in the hands of minorities}, acmid = {2791056}, added-at = {2018-06-26T15:18:25.000+0200}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, author = {Baeza-Yates, Ricardo and Saez-Trumper, Diego}, biburl = {https://www.bibsonomy.org/bibtex/2d23d449048af2f0619c2056478b9d172/hotho}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Hypertext \&\#38; Social Media}, description = {Wisdom of the Crowd or Wisdom of a Few?}, doi = {10.1145/2700171.2791056}, interhash = {2743e3d00da1c6435b816af5b64b1bc2}, intrahash = {d23d449048af2f0619c2056478b9d172}, isbn = {978-1-4503-3395-5}, keywords = {content crowd few generation toread wisdom}, location = {Guzelyurt, Northern Cyprus}, numpages = {6}, pages = {69--74}, publisher = {ACM}, series = {HT '15}, timestamp = {2018-06-26T15:18:25.000+0200}, title = {Wisdom of the Crowd or Wisdom of a Few?: An Analysis of Users' Content Generation}, url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2700171.2791056}, year = 2015 }