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On
Facebook, people befriend people who are already very much like
themselves, and their cultural tastes change only slightly in response
to the tastes of others, a study finds.
Researchers followed the Facebook
pages and networks of about 1,600 students at one college for four years
(looking only at public information).
The strongest determinant of Facebook
friendship was proximity—living in the same building, studying the same
subject—and people also self-segregated by gender, race and place of
origin.
On the cultural front, people who
liked the genres of "lite/classic rock" and "classical/jazz" tended to
seek each other out, as did devotees of films featuring "dark satire" or
"raunchy comedy/gore."
"Jazz/classical" was the only taste to
spread from people who possessed it to those who lacked it. The study
also found that people whose friends liked "indie/alt" music tended over
time to shed that interest themselves.
"Social Selection and Peer Influence in an Online
Social Network," Kevin Lewis, Marco Gonzalez and Jason Kaufman
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Dec. 19 online)
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