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Social Network Analysis and Mining
Published in:

01-12-2023 | Original Article

Who joins which network, and why?

Authors: Yuxin Zhang, Dafeng Xu

Published in: Social Network Analysis and Mining | Issue 1/2023

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Abstract

Social networks—such as alumni networks—affect the productivity of highly educated immigrants through collaboration, knowledge spillover, job referrals, etc. Using online social networking data, we study how international graduate students choose an online identity associated with the “main alumni network” when there are multiple schools attended, but only one alumni network can be selected. We focus on students who receive undergraduate education in China and graduate education in the USA using data from Renren.com, a China-based Facebook-type networking website, on which users can only identify one network among multiple options. We find that pre-migration preferences for Western culture—measured by English-name usage—increase the likelihood of choosing the US school network. Causal inference is based on the design of linguistic instrumental variables for English-name usage. While school prestige should also affect the choice of alumni network, our results highlight the importance of cultural preferences in network choices: The effect of English-name usage is significant regardless of school rankings.
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Appendix
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Footnotes
1
English is the mandatory subject in China’s college entrance test. Furthermore, in most colleges, students must take at least four semesters of English courses, and passing the English test is required for graduation.
 
2
After 2000, there have been an increasing number of native English speakers who teach various English classes (most commonly, oral English) in China’s K-12 schools and colleges.
 
3
These two features differentiate China from other major Asian countries or regions where (a) an English name can be officially included in the given name, and most citizens adopt and use English names (e.g., Singapore and Hong Kong), or (b) most students use names that reflect own ethnic and cultural traditions and do not adopt Westernized given names through English learning (e.g., Japan and India).
 
4
We test this by investigating Renren accounts of undergraduate students of Tsinghua University, which releases the list of incoming students. We find that over 90% of Tsinghua students have Renren accounts, registered after entering the college.
 
5
For example, the parenthesis “(Peking University)” or “(Harvard University)” will show the main network of a school in China or the USA. This design was in Renren’s older version before 2017, when the dataset of this paper was collected. In Renren’s current version, the school is shown at the top of the profile.
 
6
The C9 League comprises nine most prestigious universities in mainland China. These universities are (in alphabetical order): Fudan University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Nanjing University, Peking University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Tsinghua University, University of Science and Technology of China, Xi’an Jiao Tong University, and Zhejiang University.
 
7
Project 985 is the project initiated by the government of China, which allocates funding to China’s 39 universities with very high research activity. Non-C9 sponsored universities constitute the second tier.
 
8
One example involves shí which mean “stone” or “time” in Chinese and is widely used in masculine names. It is, however, pronounced as she by English speakers.
 
9
Reversal causality will make OLS estimates upward biased, which is found outweighed by measurement errors in the above papers. In this paper, we do not have reversal causality by Renren’s settings, as students are only likely to change the alumni network after moving to the USA, i.e., after posting their name usage.
 
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Metadata
Title
Who joins which network, and why?
Authors
Yuxin Zhang
Dafeng Xu
Publication date
01-12-2023
Publisher
Springer Vienna
Published in
Social Network Analysis and Mining / Issue 1/2023
Print ISSN: 1869-5450
Electronic ISSN: 1869-5469
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13278-023-01138-0

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