Online social activity reflects economic status

Jin-Hu Liu, Jun Wang, Junming Shao and Tao Zhou

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2016, vol. 457, issue C, 581-589

Abstract: To characterize economic development and diagnose the economic health condition, several popular indices such as gross domestic product (GDP), industrial structure and income growth are widely applied. However, computing these indices based on traditional economic census is usually costly and resources consuming, and more importantly, following a long time delay. In this paper, we analyzed nearly 200 million users’ activities for four consecutive years in the largest social network (Sina Microblog) in China, aiming at exploring latent relationships between the online social activities and local economic status. Results indicate that online social activity has a strong correlation with local economic development and industrial structure, and more interestingly, allows revealing the macro-economic structure instantaneously with nearly no cost. Beyond, this work also provides a new venue to identify risky signal in local economic structure.

Keywords: Social network; Economy; Support vector regression; Prediction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:457:y:2016:i:c:p:581-589

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2016.03.033

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