Do diversity and context collapse kill an online social network?

Abstract

Our social lives consist of various circles, such as family, friends, and colleagues. Differences in norms and expectations among these circles can create tension in large online social networks (OSNs) due to blurred boundaries. It is unclear whether this phenomenon, known as context collapse, outweighs the convenience of having diverse communities in one place for OSN users. To explore this trade-off, we examined if ego network characteristics indicating context collapse could explain users’ decisions to leave iWiW, a defunct Hungarian OSN with over 3.5 million active users at its peak. We assessed context collapse based on two conditions: the absence of overlapping communities measured by network modularity and social differences between those communities. We find that users with fragmented social networks indeed leave the platform earlier if these distinct communities differ significantly in their age profiles and urban-rural composition. However, the highest probability of leaving was among those with non-fragmented networks and similar communities. These seemingly contradicting results are caused by the process that network fragmentation itself decreases the probability of leaving. Thus, our results demonstrate simultaneously how brokerage can be valuable and context collapse stressful for users of OSNs.