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Red, purple and pink: the colors of diffusion on pinterest.

Authors :
Saeideh Bakhshi
Eric Gilbert
Source :
PLoS ONE, Vol 10, Iss 2, p e0117148 (2015)
Publication Year :
2015
Publisher :
Public Library of Science (PLoS), 2015.

Abstract

Many lab studies have shown that colors can evoke powerful emotions and impact human behavior. Might these phenomena drive how we act online? A key research challenge for image-sharing communities is uncovering the mechanisms by which content spreads through the community. In this paper, we investigate whether there is link between color and diffusion. Drawing on a corpus of one million images crawled from Pinterest, we find that color significantly impacts the diffusion of images and adoption of content on image sharing communities such as Pinterest, even after partially controlling for network structure and activity. Specifically, Red, Purple and pink seem to promote diffusion, while Green, Blue, Black and Yellow suppress it. To our knowledge, our study is the first to investigate how colors relate to online user behavior. In addition to contributing to the research conversation surrounding diffusion, these findings suggest future work using sophisticated computer vision techniques. We conclude with a discussion on the theoretical, practical and design implications suggested by this work-e.g. design of engaging image filters.

Subjects

Subjects :
Medicine
Science

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
19326203
Volume :
10
Issue :
2
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
PLoS ONE
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.385629101c474f848c730799838897aa
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0117148