blogs and the economics of reciprocal (in)attention

8/14/2019 Blogs and the economics of reciprocal (in)attention

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Blogs and the economics ofreciprocal (in)attention

Alexia Gaudeul,Chiara Peroni and

Laurence Mathieu.

April 21st 2009, Conference of the Royal Economic Society


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Outline of the presentation

1. Blogs, context and motivations.2. Objectives of the research3. The norm of reciprocity4. The dataset: Livejournal friendship patterns.5. Empirical Analysis.6. Conclusion and further research.


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Context of the paper

Growth in participation in Internet-mediated non-monetary participative processesSocial networking, open source software, wikis, social news

websites such as digg or reddit, etc...

Particularly important for companies that managecommunities of self-motivated individuals.eBay, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook.

Also important for media, culture, journalism...


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Motivations for blogging

Different reasons for blogging.Make friends.Interacting with other bloggers and in

communities.Become popular and well-known.Expressing oneself and publicizing own work.

Update far located and dispersed real life friends(web presence).


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Results

Study of the behaviour of bloggers.

We show that attention and content are the currenciesof trade within bloggers networks.

We evidence the importance of reciprocity norms inblogging networks.


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A model of content production (1)

e i effort by agents i.Agent i devotes attention n ij to the content produced by jand n ik to the content produced by k.

1

2 3

n21n12

n23

n32

n13

n31

e 2

e 1

e 3


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A simple additive form for the total utility of agent is:

U i (n,e) = d sum j i n ji e i + sum j i n ij e j - C(e i )

Content producers choose how much attention todevote to each other and how much content to produce.

Utility fromreading others

Utility frombeing read

Cost of contentproduction


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We suppose there isFree entry and exit in the blogging marketPerfect information on the activity of each bloggers.Attention budget T, the same for all agents.Attention shared equally between all friends.Number of friends readers independent of ones number of

friends


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Hypothesis

H1: Network size: Bloggers who display higher levelsof content production and general blogging activity willhave a higher number of friends.H2: Network imbalances: Bloggers with more readers(friend of) than readees (friends) will produce morecontent than others.


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Norm of reciprocity: Caveats!

Other possible forms of reciprocityA friend for a friend.A comment for a comment.Reciprocate only if content of high enough quality.

Other possible motivations: reader only, writer only.External effects, e.g. real world celebrities.Limitations in the data available


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The dataset: LiveJournal

Livejournal is essentially an aggregation tool with lock-in effectWrite and read public and private entriesParticipate in communities and exchange comments

Use of proxies for attention exchanged and expendedfrom a number of bloggers activity.Content production (posting per day)

Interaction (comments, community participation)Commitment (length of time active)


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The dataset: LiveJournal

2767 users.Main characteristics (median):Three years activity (and counting!).One post every two days. Each receive 1.5 comments.Balance between friends / readers (26 / 25).Balance between comments received / made.Membership in 14 communities.


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Friends vs. friends of


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Reciprocity equation

ln(friends of i )=a+b*ln(friends)+u i

(0.017)3.41RESET

(0.002)9.39BP

43673***F (1, 2494)

0.942R22496obs

0.0006.070.0170.103constant

0.000208.980.0050.985***ln(friends)

P >| t |t -valueseln(friends of)

***:


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Regressions (1)

Activity equation 1 to test H1 :ln(friend of i )=cX i +v i

with X i a matrix of independent variables measuring theactivity of the blogger i

Activity equation 2 to test H2 :ln(friend of i /friends i )=dX i +w i with X i a matrix of independent variables measuring theactivity of the blogger i .


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Activity equation 1 and 2

Dependent variable: ln(friends of) ln(friends of/friends)

ln(communities) 0.152*** 0.170*** -0.030***ln(entries) 0.579*** 0.576*** -0.007

ln(commentsreceived per post) 0.776*** 0.742*** 0.070***

ln(commentsmade per friends) -0.463*** -0.525*** 0.138***

ln(duration) 0.601*** 0.603*** -0.025***

ln(friends of/friends) 0.474***

constant 0.781*** 0.950*** 0.240***obs 1334 1334 1357adj R2 0.880 0.902 0.275F stat 1550*** 1646*** 83***

***:


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Additional regressions

ln(readers i /friends i) instrumented by X i.Shows that deviating from the norm of reciprocity has a

negative effect on number of readers and friends.Use of a measure of network asymmetryShows that part of the effect is due to asymmetry, not

imbalance, in a bloggers network of relations.


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Conclusion

Activity significant predictor of size of friend listWhich comes first?Topic for further study based on panel data set.

Interpretation of reciprocity norm: does a balancedfriends list lead to more or less friends?Those who care about reciprocity may be less willing to

friend others (risk of friendship not returned).Those who care about reciprocity may reciprocate more,

thus accumulating more friends over time.Net effect is ambiguous, as seen in contradiction in results

of OLS and IV regression.


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Future research

Is there saturation in reciprocation, i.e. limit to the sizeof a bloggers network?Further research in the effect of systematicallyreciprocating or to not reciprocating.

--> Collection and analysis of panel dataDo you befriend (link) because of content produced, or doyou produce content because of friends?

Further analysis of reciprocation at the individual level.

blogs and the economics of reciprocal (in)attention

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