A Multilevel Analysis of the Network Topology Effects on Communication Disparity in Facebook

Abstract

Most messages on social media platforms are reportedly posted by a small number of active communicators, while the great majority of users remain idle as lurkers who read but seldom write. Despite extensive research to date, it remains unclear why such a disparity in individuals’ voluntary participation exists. Drawing on the behavioral data of Facebook users nested in diverse local networks, this study attempted to examine how the structural properties of networks influence the highly skewed distribution of message contributions between individual users. Multilevel statistical analyses of 73 egocentric networks (N = 15,633) reveal that the disparity in voluntary social media communication is a collective outcome that is conditional on path-dependent structural processes in which final outcomes are contingent on prior outcomes over time.