Drivers of social influence in the Twitter migration to Mastodon

Understand

The migration of Twitter users to Mastodon following Elon Musk's acquisition presents a unique opportunity to study collective behavior and gain insights into the drivers of coordinated behavior in online media.

• We analyzed the social network and the public conversations of about 75,000 migrated users and observed that the temporal trace of their migrations is compatible with a phenomenon of social influence, as described by a compartmental epidemic model of information diffusion.
• Drawing from prior research on behavioral change, we delved into the factors that account for variations across different Twitter communities in the effectiveness of the spreading of the influence to migrate.
• Communities in which the influence process unfolded more rapidly exhibit lower density of social connections, higher levels of signaled commitment to migrating, and more emphasis on shared identity and exchange of factual knowledge in the community discussion.