Abstract
We use public data from Twitter to study the breakups of the romantic relationships of 661 couples. Couples are identified through profile references such as @user1 writing "@user2 is the best boyfriend ever!!". Using this data set we find evidence for a number of existing hypotheses describing psychological processes including (i) prerelationship closeness being indicative of post-relationship closeness, (ii) "stonewalling", i.e., ignoring messages by a partner, being indicative of a pending breakup, and (iii) post-breakup depression. We also observe a previously undocumented phenomenon of "batch un-friending and being un-friended" where users who break up experience sudden drops of 15-20 followers and friends. Our work shows that public Twitter data can be used to gain new insights into psychological processes surrounding relationship dissolutions, something that most people go through at least once in their lifetime.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Social Informatics - 6th International Conference, SocInfo 2014, Proceedings |
Publisher | Springer Verlag |
Pages | 199-215 |
Number of pages | 17 |
Volume | 8851 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9783319137339 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2014 |
MoE publication type | A4 Article in a conference publication |
Event | International Conference on Social Informatics - Barcelona, Spain Duration: 11 Nov 2014 → 13 Nov 2014 Conference number: 6 |
Publication series
Name | Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics) |
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Volume | 8851 |
ISSN (Print) | 03029743 |
ISSN (Electronic) | 16113349 |
Conference
Conference | International Conference on Social Informatics |
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Abbreviated title | SocInfo |
Country | Spain |
City | Barcelona |
Period | 11/11/2014 → 13/11/2014 |
Keywords
- Breakups
- Relationships