Silence in Social Media: A Multilevel Analysis of the Network Structure Effects on Participation 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 silent as lurkers who read but seldom write. Despite extensive research to date, it remains unclear why such a disparity in individuals' participation in social media exists. Drawing on the behavioral data of 15,633 Facebook users nested in 73 local networks, this study attempted to examine how the structural properties of networks give rise to the highly skewed distribution of message contributions between individual users. Multilevel statistical analyses of the data revealed that the participation disparity among individuals might be in part a function of the structural characteristics of networks in which they are embedded, suggesting that being active or silent in the social media environment is largely conditional on the surrounding network structures.