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New preprint - "Associations between content and engagement vary across social media communities" Research on social media often seeks content features linked in general to engagement, e.g. negativity, moralisation, etc. But social media is not an uniform environment.

Alberto Acerbi

@acerbialberto.com

I analysed four content features (negativity, moralisation, arousal, in/out-group balance) in 1M+ items from 587 communities on 5 corpora across Reddit, Stack Exchange, X and YouTube. Here is reddit (communities are 43 subreddits)

Alberto Acerbi

@acerbialberto.com

Some examples: in r/AmItheAsshole, the most negative posts get *less* engagement, possibly because negativity is already the baseline there. In r/cscareerquestions, negativity goes with more engagement. In r/knitting, high arousal (enthusiasm?) pays off.

Alberto Acerbi

@acerbialberto.com

These results generalise. I compare two multilevel models. One estimates a single within-community slope per feature and the other lets slopes vary across communities. Varying-slope models fit better in all five corpora.

Alberto Acerbi

@acerbialberto.com

Expected absolute slope values of communities are larger than the common slope estimated by the model. However, varying-slope model estimations are also small. The better fit does not come from stronger average effects, but from taking into account heterogeneity.

6/10/26, 3:21 pm0 reposts0 likes

Alberto Acerbi

@acerbialberto.com

This may explain some contrasting findings in the literature. Different studies may find different associations. "Universal" effects may be masked by sampling heterogeneous niches. Link to the preprint: osf.io/preprints/so...

osf.ioAssociations between content and engagement vary across social media communitiesResearch on social media engagement often seeks general content features that are associated with online success. However, social media platforms contain communities with different audiences, topics, ...