Empowered or Constrained in Platform Governance? An Analysis of Twitter Users’ Responses to Elon Musk’s Takeover

IF 5.5 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

Social Media + Society Pub Date : 2024-09-14 DOI:10.1177/20563051241277606

Rui Wang, Yini Zhang, Jiyoun Suk, Sara Holland Levin

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Abstract

Centering on social media’s public- and profit-oriented nature, this study theorizes how social media users are empowered and constrained when participating in platform governance through user-initiated expressions on platforms. The empirical analysis focuses on user responses before and after Elon Musk’s official acquisition of Twitter, utilizing cluster analysis and topic modeling to examine the volume and content of related discourses among different Twitter user groups. Our results point to user constraint in platform governance. Although a diverse set of users, such as partisans, bots, and cryptocurrency enthusiasts, spoke up, they had diverging and sometimes conflicting objectives; and partisans dominated the conversations. There was an upsurge in user volume and activity level post-acquisition among liberal users, whose critical voices on platform governance might have bolstered platform business. Potential bots also increased in volume and amplified political topics. Our findings shed light on the challenges of user-driven platform governance, underscoring the complex interplay between platform users, economy, and governance.

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平台治理中的赋权还是受限？推特用户对埃隆-马斯克收购的反应分析

本研究以社交媒体的公共性和营利性为中心，通过用户在平台上的自发表达，从理论上探讨了社交媒体用户在参与平台治理时是如何被赋予权力和受到制约的。实证分析的重点是埃隆-马斯克正式收购推特前后的用户反应，利用聚类分析和主题建模来研究不同推特用户群体中相关论述的数量和内容。我们的研究结果表明了用户在平台管理中的制约因素。虽然党派人士、机器人和加密货币爱好者等不同用户群体都发表了意见，但他们的目标各不相同，有时甚至相互冲突；党派人士主导了对话。收购后，自由派用户的用户量和活跃度激增，他们对平台治理的批评声音可能会促进平台业务的发展。潜在机器人的数量也有所增加，并放大了政治话题。我们的研究结果揭示了用户驱动的平台治理所面临的挑战，强调了平台用户、经济和治理之间复杂的相互作用。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Social Media + Society COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

9.20

自引率

3.80%

发文量

111

审稿时长

12 weeks

期刊介绍： Social Media + Society is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future. We publish interdisciplinary work that draws from the social sciences, humanities and computational social sciences, reaches out to the arts and natural sciences, and we endorse mixed methods and methodologies. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms and methodologies. The editorial vision of Social Media + Society draws inspiration from research on social media to outline a field of study poised to reflexively grow as social technologies evolve. We foster the open access of sharing of research on the social properties of media, as they manifest themselves through the uses people make of networked platforms past and present, digital and non. The journal presents a collaborative, open, and shared space, dedicated exclusively to the study of social media and their implications for societies. It facilitates state-of-the-art research on cutting-edge trends and allows scholars to focus and track trends specific to this field of study.

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