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Online social activity reflects economic status

Author

Listed:
  • Liu, Jin-Hu
  • Wang, Jun
  • Shao, Junming
  • Zhou, Tao

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Liu, Jin-Hu & Wang, Jun & Shao, Junming & Zhou, Tao, 2016. "Online social activity reflects economic status," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 457(C), pages 581-589.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:457:y:2016:i:c:p:581-589
    DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2016.03.033
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Cem Çağrı Dönmez & Abdulkadir Atalan, 2019. "Developing Statistical Optimization Models for Urban Competitiveness Index: Under the Boundaries of Econophysics Approach," Complexity, Hindawi, vol. 2019, pages 1-11, November.
    2. Jian Gao, 2017. "Maximizing the Collective Learning Effects in Regional Economic Development," Papers 1712.08876, arXiv.org.
    3. Jincheng Jiang & Jinsong Chen & Wei Tu & Chisheng Wang, 2019. "A Novel Effective Indicator of Weighted Inter-City Human Mobility Networks to Estimate Economic Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(22), pages 1-18, November.
    4. Juana Alonso-Cañadas & Federico Galán-Valdivieso & Laura Saraite-Sariene & Carmen Caba-Pérez, 2020. "Committed to Health: Key Factors to Improve Users’ Online Engagement through Facebook," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(6), pages 1-22, March.
    5. Jian Gao & Tao Zhou, 2017. "Quantifying China's Regional Economic Complexity," Papers 1703.01292, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2017.
    6. Zhang, Chi & Zhou, Kaile & Yang, Shanlin & Shao, Zhen, 2017. "Exploring the transformation and upgrading of China’s economy using electricity consumption data: A VAR–VEC based model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 473(C), pages 144-155.

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