Cargando…

The interplay of migration and cultural similarity between countries: Evidence from Facebook data on food and drink interests

Migration has been proposed as one of the factors that shape cultural similarities across countries. However, studying the relationship between culture and migration has been challenging, in part because culture is difficult to quantify. The traditionally used survey questionnaires have a number of...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Vieira, Carolina C., Lohmann, Sophie, Zagheni, Emilio, Vaz de Melo, Pedro O. S., Benevenuto, Fabrício, Ribeiro, Filipe N.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8827441/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35139114
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262947
_version_ 1784647628953223168
author Vieira, Carolina C.
Lohmann, Sophie
Zagheni, Emilio
Vaz de Melo, Pedro O. S.
Benevenuto, Fabrício
Ribeiro, Filipe N.
author_facet Vieira, Carolina C.
Lohmann, Sophie
Zagheni, Emilio
Vaz de Melo, Pedro O. S.
Benevenuto, Fabrício
Ribeiro, Filipe N.
author_sort Vieira, Carolina C.
collection PubMed
description Migration has been proposed as one of the factors that shape cultural similarities across countries. However, studying the relationship between culture and migration has been challenging, in part because culture is difficult to quantify. The traditionally used survey questionnaires have a number of drawbacks, including that they are costly and difficult to scale to a large number of countries. To complement survey data, we propose the use of passively-collected digital traces from social media. We focus on food and drink as markers of a country’s culture. We then measure similarities between countries in terms of food and drink interests using aggregated data from the Facebook Advertising Platform. Methodologically, we offer approaches to measure the similarity between countries with both symmetric and asymmetric indices. Substantively, we assess the association between migration cultural similarity between countries by comparing our measure of cultural similarity with international migration data. In most countries, larger immigrant populations are associated with more similar food and drink preferences between their country of origin and the country of destination. Our results suggest that immigrants contribute to bringing the culture of their home countries to new countries. Moreover, our study identifies considerable variability in this pattern across countries.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-8827441
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2022
publisher Public Library of Science
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-88274412022-02-10 The interplay of migration and cultural similarity between countries: Evidence from Facebook data on food and drink interests Vieira, Carolina C. Lohmann, Sophie Zagheni, Emilio Vaz de Melo, Pedro O. S. Benevenuto, Fabrício Ribeiro, Filipe N. PLoS One Research Article Migration has been proposed as one of the factors that shape cultural similarities across countries. However, studying the relationship between culture and migration has been challenging, in part because culture is difficult to quantify. The traditionally used survey questionnaires have a number of drawbacks, including that they are costly and difficult to scale to a large number of countries. To complement survey data, we propose the use of passively-collected digital traces from social media. We focus on food and drink as markers of a country’s culture. We then measure similarities between countries in terms of food and drink interests using aggregated data from the Facebook Advertising Platform. Methodologically, we offer approaches to measure the similarity between countries with both symmetric and asymmetric indices. Substantively, we assess the association between migration cultural similarity between countries by comparing our measure of cultural similarity with international migration data. In most countries, larger immigrant populations are associated with more similar food and drink preferences between their country of origin and the country of destination. Our results suggest that immigrants contribute to bringing the culture of their home countries to new countries. Moreover, our study identifies considerable variability in this pattern across countries. Public Library of Science 2022-02-09 /pmc/articles/PMC8827441/ /pubmed/35139114 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262947 Text en © 2022 Vieira et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Vieira, Carolina C.
Lohmann, Sophie
Zagheni, Emilio
Vaz de Melo, Pedro O. S.
Benevenuto, Fabrício
Ribeiro, Filipe N.
The interplay of migration and cultural similarity between countries: Evidence from Facebook data on food and drink interests
title The interplay of migration and cultural similarity between countries: Evidence from Facebook data on food and drink interests
title_full The interplay of migration and cultural similarity between countries: Evidence from Facebook data on food and drink interests
title_fullStr The interplay of migration and cultural similarity between countries: Evidence from Facebook data on food and drink interests
title_full_unstemmed The interplay of migration and cultural similarity between countries: Evidence from Facebook data on food and drink interests
title_short The interplay of migration and cultural similarity between countries: Evidence from Facebook data on food and drink interests
title_sort interplay of migration and cultural similarity between countries: evidence from facebook data on food and drink interests
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8827441/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35139114
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262947
work_keys_str_mv AT vieiracarolinac theinterplayofmigrationandculturalsimilaritybetweencountriesevidencefromfacebookdataonfoodanddrinkinterests
AT lohmannsophie theinterplayofmigrationandculturalsimilaritybetweencountriesevidencefromfacebookdataonfoodanddrinkinterests
AT zagheniemilio theinterplayofmigrationandculturalsimilaritybetweencountriesevidencefromfacebookdataonfoodanddrinkinterests
AT vazdemelopedroos theinterplayofmigrationandculturalsimilaritybetweencountriesevidencefromfacebookdataonfoodanddrinkinterests
AT benevenutofabricio theinterplayofmigrationandculturalsimilaritybetweencountriesevidencefromfacebookdataonfoodanddrinkinterests
AT ribeirofilipen theinterplayofmigrationandculturalsimilaritybetweencountriesevidencefromfacebookdataonfoodanddrinkinterests
AT vieiracarolinac interplayofmigrationandculturalsimilaritybetweencountriesevidencefromfacebookdataonfoodanddrinkinterests
AT lohmannsophie interplayofmigrationandculturalsimilaritybetweencountriesevidencefromfacebookdataonfoodanddrinkinterests
AT zagheniemilio interplayofmigrationandculturalsimilaritybetweencountriesevidencefromfacebookdataonfoodanddrinkinterests
AT vazdemelopedroos interplayofmigrationandculturalsimilaritybetweencountriesevidencefromfacebookdataonfoodanddrinkinterests
AT benevenutofabricio interplayofmigrationandculturalsimilaritybetweencountriesevidencefromfacebookdataonfoodanddrinkinterests
AT ribeirofilipen interplayofmigrationandculturalsimilaritybetweencountriesevidencefromfacebookdataonfoodanddrinkinterests