The impact of group attributes on communication activity and shared language in online communities

Authors

  • David A. Huffaker Northwestern University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v16i4.3450

Keywords:

online communities, social network analysis, corpus linguistics

Abstract

This study examines how group size, network density, participation equality and member turnover are related to communication activity and shared language in online communities. It examines the social interactions of sixteen randomly selected discussion groups (33,450 participants and 632,622 messages) covering topics in politics, health, hobbies, and science and technology over a 20-month period. It relies on social network analysis, computational linguistics and hierarchical linear modeling to uncover the extent to which group attributes impact message replies, conversational thread length and shared word choices. The results show that group size and network density are positively related to communication activity and shared language, while participation equality and member turnover are not significant predictors.

Author Biography

David A. Huffaker, Northwestern University

David Huffaker (Ph.D., Northwestern University) is a researcher at Google, Inc.

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Published

2011-03-28

How to Cite

Huffaker, D. A. (2011). The impact of group attributes on communication activity and shared language in online communities. First Monday, 16(4). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v16i4.3450