A Taxonomy of User Actions on Social Networking Sites

Abstract

The spread of information within and across Social Networking Sites (SNSs) is increasingly impactful on contemporary society. As information (and misinformation) moves across multiple online platforms, it is important to be able to put these platforms in conversation with one another in order to better understand complex phenomena. This article proposes a taxonomy of actions that are consistent across SNSs to provide researchers and other stakeholders with consistent terminology that enables classifying and comparing user activities over a variety of social media platforms. The proposed taxonomy of actions indicates that although SNSs differentiate themselves in the market and at the level of user experience through unique capabilities and forms of interaction, they can be productively understood as varying means to perform the same set of underlying actions: create, vote, follow, and post.