Patterns in Social Networking on Facebook amongst Migrants

The final speaker in this Web Science 2016 session is Amaç Herdagdelen, whose interest is in the experience of immigrants using social networks. On Facebook, for instance, information about one's migrant status can be included in one's profile information; by identifying users with a difference between their stated home country and country of residence, the present study identified some 93 home countries with more than 10,000 immigrants on Facebook, for migrants in the U.S.

Additionally, it computed the exposure of users to friends with a migrant background, and calculated the relative exposure to various countries of origin; the highest level of exposure is for German migrants living in the U.S., for instance. It is also possible to calculate each migrant population's diffusion in the country, with Indian migrants most diffused in the U.S. but relatively poorly exposed to U.S. locals; this may be because Indian migrants have usually arrived quite recently, while on average German migrants are one of the oldest migrant communities found on U.S. Facebook. There are also interesting patterns in whether migrants from different origins are settling in larger cities.