Understanding the dynamics of online communities

Virginia Polytechnic Institute And State University, Blacksburg VA

Investigators

Abstract

Online communities are an increasingly widespread and influential phenomenon (e.g. Facebook, Digg, YouTube). While economic logic suggests that the reduced communication barriers online should bring people together through exchange of ideas in a global village, group polarization may occur more easily online as like-minded people can find peers regardless of geographical constraints and reinforce each other?s views. Polarization may result in the monopolization of a social network by the majority group. Therefore a key empirical question is how the dynamics of user content generation, consumption, and evaluation leads to the formation of shared or divergent worldviews online. To address this question, this research team will first empirically measure the evolving heterogeneity of sub-communities in an online social news community of over 30000 users. The team has access to complete data on all interactions since its inception in 2006. They will then identify the factors influencing the dynamics of different sub-communities within this community (growth, contraction, merging, splitting, birth and death of sub-communities), and the factors influencing user participation and join/leave decisions. Interviews and content coding will be combined with statistical methods for the purpose of understanding the underlying mechanisms that govern the dynamics of sub-communities in an online environment. This study will shed light on the dynamics of polarization and homogenization in online communities, which is an issue of great interest as civil society copes with the changes engendered by new, pervasive, electronic communications media. In addition, in the process of measuring community opinion over time the team will develop and improve upon metrics and analysis methods that should be of value to others who wish to study group beliefs or interactions in online communities.