document: The role of social networks in information diffusion Online social networking technologies enable individuals to simultaneously share information with any number of peers . Quantifying the causal effect of these mediums on the dissemination of information requires not only identification of who influences whom , but also of whether individuals would still propagate information in the absence of social signals about that information . We examine the role of social networks in online information diffusion with a large-scale field experiment that randomizes exposure to signals about friends ' information sharing among 253 million subjects in situ . Those who are exposed are significantly more likely to spread information , and do so sooner than those who are not exposed . We further examine the relative role of strong and weak ties in information propagation . We show that , although stronger ties are individually more influential , it is the more abundant weak ties who are responsible for the propagation of novel information . This suggests that weak ties may play a more dominant role in the dissemination of information online than currently believed .
doc_bio_tags: O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O