On Participation in Group Chats on Twitter

The success of a group depends on continued participation of its members through time. We study the factors that affect continued user participation in the context of educational Twitter chats. To predict whether a user that attended her first session in a particular Twitter chat group will return to the group, we build 5F Model that captures five different factors: individual initiative, group characteristics, perceived receptivity, linguistic affinity, and geographical proximity. Through statistical data analysis of thirty Twitter chats over a two year period as well as a survey study, our work provides many insights about group dynamics in Twitter chats. We show similarities between Twitter chats and traditional groups such as the importance of social inclusion and linguistic similarity while also identifying important distinctions such as the insignificance of geographical proximity. We also show that informational support is more important than emotional support in educational Twitter chats, but this does not reduce the sense of community as suggested in earlier studies.