On Participation in Group Chats on Twitter

Ceren Budak Rakesh Agrawal UCSB Microsoft Search Labs

17 May 2013WWW’13

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RESEARCH QUESTION: WHAT MAKES A PERSON COME BACK TO A GROUP?Goal: Identifying the significant characteristics that signal whether a person that attended a given group for the first time will come back for at least one more meeting

?Implications from the individual perspective:Implications from the group perspective:

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Twitter Chats: Manifestations of groups in Twitter

– On a specific topic

– Regularly scheduled meet-ups (generally weekly, 1 hour each)

– Identified by a specific hashtag– How are Twitter chats unique?

Synchronous group discussions at scale

#adchat

#BCSM#teachchatand hundreds more…

#phdchat

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Data Sets

• All tweets from June 2010-July 2012

• A community-kept list of over 100 education chats– Filter to make sure we have entire history & enough history. Focus on

only synchronous conservations rather than all tweets tagged by the group hashtag

• 30 chat groups studied– General and specific– Big and small– Geographically distributed

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5F Model– Goal: Predicting continued

participation– Solution: We introduce 5F

Model that captures 5 high level families of factors

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1. Individual Initiative

“Due to differences in personality, motivations and past experiences some people are more likely than others to seek out membership in groups” Forsyth, Group Dynamics

• Big Five Theory: 5 high level personality traits that affect group participation. Most significantly extraversion

• Captured through #tweets user contributesin her first session

• We also look at: #retweets, #mentions, #urls

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2. Group Characteristics

• Amount of information: Information overload (Rogers, Agarwala-Rogers 1975)– Users are more likely to end active participation

(Jones et al. 2004)– Captured through #tweets and #urls in session

• Group Maturity: – Groups become more cohesive over time (Tuckman

1965). Such groups can get more closed (Ziller 1965)– Captured through #sessions to date

• We also look at: Informational Influence (#retweets) and Intermember Relations (#mentions)

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3. Perceived Receptivity

• Ostracism: To be deliberately ignored and excluded by others (Cyberostracism Williams & Sommer 2007)

• Captured through: Is mentioned? Is retweeted?

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4. Linguistic Affinity

• Speech Codes Theory (Philipsen 1997) suggests that use of language defines people as insiders/outsiders of groups

• Captured through: LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) with 81 different markers– High level categories:

• Linguistic processes (e.g. pronouns)• Psychological processes (e.g. positive/negative emotion)• Personal concerns (e.g. work, leisure)• Spoken categories (e.g. fillers) • Punctuation

– Use Pearson correlation between the LIWC vector of the user and the others in the session

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5. Geographical Proximity

• Proximity Principle (Newcomb 1960): People join groups that happen to be close-by

• Captured through: The average distance of the user to others in the session– We geo-tagged over 50% of users – Used Haversine formula to identify L2 distance:

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Putting it all Together

Statistically significant

# urls in session (information overload)

and group maturity (open-closed groups)

are statistically significant

Highly correlated

Odds ratio for ismentioned = exp(1)=2.7

Odds ratio for isretweeted = exp(0.69)=2

Similarity between the language of the user and

the group is strongly correlated with

becoming a member

Mildly correlated

Best individual modelLeast informative model

Focus of most related workWe find it to be the second to lastmost informative factor

Extraversion positively correlated and

statistically significant

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Survey Study

We circulated 26 question survey (60 participants)• To capture (1) usage, advantages and disadvantages,

(2) sense of community and responsibility, and (3) evolution of participation

≈

I just remember being overwhelmed with

excitement that I was actually being accepted

as a teacher whose ideas actually were

worthwhile (and not looked down upon) to

others.

… The group was very supportive -

retweeted my thoughts, asked

follow-up questions. …

I was welcomed and greeted warmly - I went

back - it wasn't repeated - but the conversation was

worth it, so I lurk and read archives.

… and at the beginning I felt like an outsider. I

think that it takes awhile to get the hang of chats.

…

Language identified as the most significant challengeDiversity in backgrounds and geography identified as the most important advantage

Check our paper for some other key results on types of social support and implications in commitment theory

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Conclusions & Implications

• Some suggestions for Twitter chat moderators/organizers– Pay close attention to social inclusion– Alleviate the negative effects of information overload– Enable geo-diversity: e.g. multiple sessions on different time-zones– Make the language familiarity easy for newcomers

• The greater goal: Nurturing groups & online education• Still much to be done

– Factors not captured in the model – Going beyond second attendance

Expected Surprising

Perceived Receptivity

Individual Initiative

Geographical ProximityGroup Characteristics

Linguistic Affinity

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THANK YOU! ANY QUESTIONS?

Overview of twitter chats studied

Number of tweets, users and sessions also vary

Some chats are more concentrated to a particular region while others

are more global

Includes groups focused on general topics like “#teachchat” as well as

more specific groups like “#1stchat”

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More about the data

• #users per chat • #chats per user

People attending “sessions” are significantly less

Skewed distribution

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More about the data

• Degree distribution

Skewed distribution common toSocial networks

Twitter mandated limit on number of users to follow

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Individual Initiative Model

“Due to differences in personality, motivations and past experiences some people are more likely than others to seek out membership in groups” Forsyth, Group Dynamics

We identify user behavior in their first session and test their predictive power for future participation

– #tweets: user contributes to the session– #urls: informational contribution by the user– #mentions: capturing how much user engages in conversations– #retweets:

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• Stages of group development (Tuckman 1965) & Open-Closed groups (Ziller 1965)– Groups become more cohesive over time where uncertainty about goals

and roles and authority are resolved – Captured through group maturity, i.e. #sessions

• Informational Influence: Group members using responses of others as reference points and informational resources (Forsyth 2008) – Captured through #retweets

• Intermember relations: (Forsyth 2008) Captured through #mentions

Group Characteristics

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LIWC categories and examples

Category Examples

Linguistic Processes Word count words/sentence Dictionary words Words>6 letters Total function words Total pronouns I, them, itself Personal pronouns I, them, her 1st pers singular I, me, mine 1st pers plural We, us, our 2nd person You, your, thou 3rd pers singular She, her, him 3rd pers plural They, their, they’d Impersonal pronouns It, it’s, those Articles A, an, the[Common verbs]a Walk, went, see Auxiliary verbs Am, will, have Past tense a Went, ran, had Present tense a Is, does, hear Future tense a Will, gonna Adverbs Very, really, quickly Prepositions To, with, above Conjunctions And, but, whereas Negations No, not, never Quantifiers Few, many, much Numbers Second, thousand

Swear words Damn, piss, fuck

Psychological Processes

Social processesb Mate, talk, they, child

Family Daughter, husband, aunt

Friends Buddy, friend, neighbor

Humans Adult, baby, boy

Affective processes Happy, cried, abandon

Positive emotion Love, nice, sweet

Negative emotion Hurt, ugly, nasty

Anxiety Worried, fearful, nervous

Anger Hate, kill, annoyed

Sadness Crying, grief, sad

Cognitive processes cause, know, ought

Insight think, know, consider

Causation because, effect, hence

Discrepancy should, would, could

Tentative maybe, perhaps, guess

Certainty always, never

Inhibition block, constrain, stop

Inclusive And, with, include

Exclusive But, without, exclude

Perceptual processesc Observing, heard, feeling

See View, saw, seen

Hear Listen, hearing

Feel Feels, touch

Biological processes Eat, blood, pain

Body Cheek, hands, spit

Health Clinic, flu, pill

Sexual Horny, love, incest

Ingestion Dish, eat, pizza

Relativity Area, bend, exit, stop

Motion Arrive, car, go

Space Down, in, thin

Time End, until, season

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LIWC Categories continued…Category ExamplesPersonal Concerns Work Job, majors, xeroxAchievement Earn, hero, winLeisure Cook, chat, movieHome Apartment, kitchen, familyMoney Audit, cash, oweReligion Altar, church, mosqueDeath Bury, coffin, killSpoken categories Assent Agree, OK, yesNonfluencies Er, hm, ummFillers Blah, Imean, youknow