User Migration in Online Social Networks: A Case Study on Reddit During a Period of Community Unrest
By Edward Newell, David Jurgens, Haji Mohammad Saleem, Hardik Vala, Jad Sassine, Caitrin Armstrong, Derek Ruths. 2016
129 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Platforms like Reddit have attracted large and vibrant communities, but the individuals in those communities are free to migrate to other platforms at any time. History has borne this out with the mass migration from Slashdot to Digg. The underlying motivations of individuals who migrate between platforms, and the conditions that favor migration online are not well-understood. We examine Reddit during a period of community unrest affecting millions of users in the summer of 2015, and analyze large-scale changes in user behavior and migration patterns to Reddit-like alternative platforms. Using self-reported statements from user comments, surveys, and a computational analysis of the activity of users with accounts on multiple platforms, we identify the primary motivations driving user migration. While a notable number of Reddit users left for other platforms, we found that an important pull factor that enabled Reddit to retain users was its long tail of niche content. Other platforms may reach critical mass to support popular or “mainstream” topics, but Reddit’s large userbase provides a key advantage in supporting niche topics.
Subfields: Information Systems, Sociology and Political Science, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Information Systems
- Fernando Diaz
- Alexandra Olteanu
- Carlos Castillo
- Eric Gilbert
- Jacob Eisenstein
- Umashanthi Pavalanathan
- Emre Kıcıman
- Hamed Zamani
In Sociology and Political Science
- Alexandra Olteanu
- Fernando Diaz
- Carlos Castillo
- Emre Kıcıman
- Eric Gilbert
- Jacob Eisenstein
- Umashanthi Pavalanathan
- Adam Glynn
In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
- Alexandra Olteanu
- Fernando Diaz
- Carlos Castillo
- Emre Kıcıman
- Eric Gilbert
- Jacob Eisenstein
- Umashanthi Pavalanathan
- Muhammad Imran
Citations in the corpus
- Social Data: Biases, Methodological Pitfalls, and Ethical Boundaries (2019, background): “Users seem aware of such differences across platforms, highlighting key features in their adoption of a platform such as interface aesthetics, voting functionality, community size, as well as the diversity, recency and the quality of the available content (Newell et al., 2016b).”
- You Can't Stay Here (2017, background): “On July 2, 2015, Reddit fired its Director of Communications, Victoria Taylor, without any notice being given to moderators who depended on her for the operation of r/IAmA, one of the most popular subreddits [29].”