Structural differences between open and direct communication in an online community

TL;DR

This study compares open and direct communication channels in an online community, revealing structural differences in user interaction patterns and their implications for social organization.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of how open and direct communication modes differ structurally within a large online community dataset.

Findings

Open communication has a broader degree distribution and more triangles.

Direct communication shows shorter response times.

Both modes share some common structural patterns.

Abstract

Most research of online communication focuses on modes of communication that are either open (like forums, bulletin boards, Twitter, etc.) or direct (like e-mails). In this work, we study a dataset that has both types of communication channels. We relate our findings to theories of social organization and human dynamics. The data comprises 36,492 users of a movie discussion community. Our results show that there are differences in the way users communicate in the two channels that are reflected in the shape of degree- and interevent time distributions. The open communication that is designed to facilitate conversations with any member, shows a broader degree distribution and more of the triangles in the network are primarily formed in this mode of communication. The direct channel is presumably preferred by closer communication and the response time in dialogues is shorter. On a more coarse-grained level, there are common patterns in the two networks. The differences and overlaps between communication networks, thus, provide a unique window into how social and structural aspects of communication establish and evolve.