Finally, we move beyond social media research and discuss potential consequences of the production-consumption gap, which results in a remarkable visibility gap, for public opinion more broadly.

We then discuss methodological challenges this production-consumption gap poses for us, social media researchers, and derive implications for sampling, study design and inference.

Focusing on political content on social media, we discuss existing evidence on predictors and consequences of this production-consumption gap.

One phenomenon that is remarkably consistent across platforms, time and contexts: most people lurk, read along, and never really post while a small minority is very active, and very visible — a.k.a. the production-consumption gap.

We have a new preprint: osf.io/preprints/so...

What have we learned about social media - the constantly moving target of empirical research - over the past decade?

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7/ Positive social feedback in the form of up-voting comments reinforced commenting over time. Our interventions prevented early discussion drop-out whereas high group toxicity was associated with early drop-out.

6/ The global pattern of online participation inequality is remarkably stable. Financial incentives reduced participation inequality, whereas emphasis on moderation norms unexpectedly backfired by increasing comment toxicity-potentially by alerting the silent of a toxic env., inhibiting particip.

5/ Key findings: Frequent commenters were predominantly male, highly engaged in politics, and comment most when they perceive the discussions as toxic and polarized. In contrast, silent users only break their silence when they perceive discussions as respectful and constructive.

1/ Excited to share our new preprint “A Collective Field Experiment Disentangling Participation in Online Political Discussions” – osf.io/preprints/so...