Slides from Social Media and Society 2015 presentation, Toronto ON, July 28, 2015

1. @McEwanInComm
Communication of
Communities:
Linguistic Characteristics
of Online Groups
Bree McEwan
Associate Professor
Western Illinois University
b-mcewan@wiu.edu

2. @McEwanInComm
Online Communities
 Online communities can be facilitated through
message boards, email list serves, etc.
 Differ from SNS in that user identity can be
more flexible.
 Provide social support
 Informational support
 Emotional support
 Companionship

3. @McEwanInComm
Online Communities
 Virility of online communities likely depends
on four factors
 Stability (Arguello et al., 2006)
 Cohesiveness (Casey-Campbell, Martens, 2009)
 Sociability (Preece, 2001; Wise et al., 2006)
 Interactivity (Arguello et al.,, 2006; Preece, 2001;
Joyce & Kraut, 2006)

4. @McEwanInComm
Community Analysis
 Phase One
 Can these characteristics be identified through
linguistic cues?
 Can linguistic markers be predicted by the
activity level of a board?

5. @McEwanInComm
Operationalizations
 Activity Level
 15 subreddits
 Randomly selected from publically available
SFW boards
 5 from top 10%
 5 from top 20-30%
 5 from top 45-55%
 Scraped last 30 comment threads
 https://github.com/jfarmer/reddit_comment_scraper/commits?author=jfarmer

6. @McEwanInComm
Operationalizations
 Virility markers
 LIWC dictionary (Pennebaker et al., 2007)
 Stability
 Past/Present
 Cohesiveness
 “We-ness”
 Sociability
 Social words, Affect, Emotions
 Interactivity
 Thread depth

7. @McEwanInComm
Hypotheses
H1: Boards with greater activity levels should
have greater amounts of stability markers.
H2: Boards with moderate amounts of activity
should have greater cohesiveness and sociobility
than low and high activity boards
H3: Boards with greater activity levels should
have greater amounts of interactivity

8. @McEwanInComm
Research Question
 RQ: What is the relationship between
stability, cohesiveness, sociability, and
interactivity

9. @McEwanInComm
Analysis
 LIWC data
 Segmented at the level of individual messages
 N = 8447
 Percentages converted to frequency counts
 Standardized Negative Binomial Regression
 Do counts occur in one group more frequently than
another group.
 Chi-Squares
 Are counts greater or lesser than expected

10. @McEwanInComm
H1:Past
Expected Actual
Low 798 769
Moderate 744 667
High 2231 2338
Likelihood ratio χ2(2) = 13.252, p = .001

11. @McEwanInComm
H1: Future
Expected Actual
Low 426 566
Moderate 398 522
High 1192 927
Likelihood ratio χ2(2) = 327.06, p < .001

12. @McEwanInComm
H2:We-ness
Expected Actual
Low 152 124
Moderate 142 228
High 452 367
Likelihood ratio χ2(2) = 103.59, p < .001

13. @McEwanInComm
H2: Social Words
Likelihood ratio χ2(2) = 338.67, p < .001
Expected Actual
Low 1242 1317
Moderate 1158 1253
High 3470 3302

14. @McEwanInComm
H2: Affect
Expected Actual
Low 1201 1255
Moderate 1121 1201
High 3225 3359
Likelihood ratio χ2(2) = 129.67, p < .001

15. @McEwanInComm
H2: Positive Emotion
Expected Actual
Low 977 1030
Moderate 911 1021
High 2733 2571Likelihood ratio χ2(2) = 139.02, p < .001

16. @McEwanInComm
H2: Negative Emotion
Expected Actual
Low 623 616
Moderate 652 584
High 1750 1692
Likelihood ratio χ2(2) = 43.97, p < .001

17. @McEwanInComm
H3: Interactivity

18. @McEwanInComm
H3: Interactivity

19. @McEwanInComm
Research Question

20. @McEwanInComm
Future Plans
 Continue exploring relationships between
the four board characteristics
 Phase Two
 Do people perceive boards as more open
/welcoming if they contain these linguistic
markers
 Development of experimental stimuli.

21. @McEwanInComm
Future Plans
 Phase Two
 Do people perceive boards as more open
/welcoming if they contain these linguistic
markers
 Development of experimental stimuli.

22. @McEwanInComm
Future Plans
 Consider Applications
 Can support communities moderate messages
in a way to make them more appealing to
newcomers?
 Can those starting new communities tailor
messages in a way to help develop community
strength?
 Can developers design online communities to
best portray these characteristics?

23. @McEwanInComm
Communication of
Communities:
Linguistic Characteristics
of Online Groups
Bree McEwan
Associate Professor
Western Illinois University
b-mcewan@wiu.edu