Communication Method, Scale, and Entropy

In a surprise to Marshall McLuhan, we see ad hoc conversations conducted through different electronic media demonstrating very similar scaling characteristics across number of nodes, number of edges, and number of unique edges.  Looking at email lists, IRC, and long-term twitter searches, we more similarity than difference between the three media.

However, when look at the observed conditional entropy (below the fold), the differences become clear: communication patterns are very different by media type, even as the networks scale similarly in communicants.  Maybe McLuhan was right.

nodes vs unique edges

nodes vs total edges

unique vs total edges

 

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