Circadian rhythms and social media information-sharing

Abstract

Large amounts of information are shared through social media. Such communication assumes users are sufficiently aligned, not only in terms of their interests but also in terms of their emotional and cognitive states. It is not clear how this emotional and cognitive alignment is achieved for social media, given one-to-one interactions are infrequent and discussion often spans loosely connected individuals. This study argues that circadian rhythms play an important physiological role in aligning users for information-sharing, as information shared at different times of the day is likely to encounter users with common physiological states. Data are gathered from Twitter to examine patterns of sentiment and text complexity in social media, as well as how these patterns affect information-sharing. Results suggest the timing of a social media post, relative to collective patterns of sentiment and text complexity, is a better predictor of information-sharing than the sentiment and text complexity of the post itself. Put differently, information is more likely to be shared when it is posted at times of the day when other users are primed for emotion and concentration, independent of whether that posted information is itself emotional or demanding in concentration.