Temporal and Content Coupling Analysis of Social Media User Behavior

Abstract

News consumption behavior is shaped by the coupling between temporal dynamics and content selection. This study proposes a multi-scale temporal-content framework and validates it on two large real-world news datasets, MIND and Adressa. Results reveal hierarchical temporal patterns. At the macroscale, Fourier modeling identifies clear circadian rhythms; at the mesoscale, session intervals follow a power-law distribution with $\hat{I}\pm \approx 1$; and at the microscale, within-session action counts and inter-action intervals follow exponential distributions with $\hat{I}»\approx 0.3$ and $\hat{I}»\approx 0.02$, respectively. Content analysis shows that clicks are mainly driven by historical interests, while this dependence weakens as content diversity increases. Temporal-content coupling further indicates that users' historical interests dominate active time periods in shaping behavior. Preference groups also differ: timeliness and entertainment-oriented users click more frequently and rely more on historical interests, whereas diversified users click less and are more sensitive to content diversity.

17 pages, 9 figures, submitting to the Journal of Computer Information Systems