# Bridging Nations: Quantifying the Role of Multilinguals in Communication on Social Media

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.03797 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03797/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 66 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Apr 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [FastText.zip: Compressing text classification models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03651/) (2016)
- [Autoencoding Variational Inference For Topic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.01488/) (2017)
- [Is Automated Topic Model Evaluation Broken?: The Incoherence of Coherence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02173/) (2021)
- [Cross-lingual Contextualized Topic Models with Zero-shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07737/) (2020)
- [Where in the World are You? Geolocation and Language Identification in Twitter](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1308.0683/) (2013)
- [Multilinguals and Wikipedia Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1312.0976/) (2013)
- [Geotagging One Hundred Million Twitter Accounts with Total Variation Minimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1404.7152/) (2014)
- [Bias and high-dimensional adjustment in observational studies of peer effects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.04692/) (2017)
- [Understanding Editing Behaviors in Multilingual Wikipedia](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1508.07266/) (2015)
- [Linguistic neighbourhoods: explaining cultural borders on Wikipedia through multilingual co-editing activity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.04225/) (2016)
- [S'i o no, qu`e penses? Catalonian Independence and Linguistic Identity on Social Media](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.05088/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [WikiGap: Promoting Epistemic Equity by Surfacing Knowledge Gaps Between English Wikipedia and other Language Editions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.24195/) (2025)
- [BLUFF: Benchmarking the Detection of False and Synthetic Content across 58 Low-Resource Languages](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.00634/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Social media enables the rapid spread of many kinds of information, from memes to social movements. However, little is known about how information crosses linguistic boundaries. We apply causal inference techniques on the European Twitter network to quantify multilingual users' structural role and communication influence in cross-lingual information exchange. Overall, multilinguals play an essential role; posting in multiple languages increases betweenness centrality by 13%, and having a multilingual network neighbor increases monolinguals' odds of sharing domains and hashtags from another language 16-fold and 4-fold, respectively. We further show that multilinguals have a greater impact on diffusing information less accessible to their monolingual compatriots, such as information from far-away countries and content about regional politics, nascent social movements, and job opportunities. By highlighting information exchange across borders, this work sheds light on a crucial component of how information and ideas spread around the world.