Reply distribution in online discussions: A comparative network analysis of political and health newsgroups

IntroductionA major promise of the vast expansion of the Internet throughout the last decade isits potential to become a revolutionary platform for public discourse and informa-tion exchange. When connecting to the Internet, individuals are free to becomeactive participants in conversations and information seeking regarding a wide spec-trum of issues, including their social and civil lives.Joseph Nye (2002) discusses power in the information age and elaborates onSimon’s (1998) idea of the paradox of plenty.He argues that when information isaccessible through such a wide range of channels, attention - not information -becomes the scarce source. ‘‘A plenitude of information’’ Nye concludes, ‘‘leads toa poverty of attention’’ (p. 68). Network literature supports this assertion. Manylarge networks follow a power-law distribution, where links are distributeddisproportionally. The potential of the Internet to benefit individuals andsociety at large by encouraging civil discussion and exchange of informationshould, therefore, be examined neither by the mere ability of individuals toparticipate, nor simply by their actual contribution – volume or quality. Thepremise of this study is that the potential democratic contribution of the Internetshould be examined via the networks created by patterns of replies individualsevoke.The goal of this study is twofold. First, to explore the structure of Usenet news-groups as it is expressed by the distribution of replies among participants. Second, toidentify what affects this structure. Two independent variables are suggested topredict reply distributions in discussion groups: size and topic of discussions. Thesewill be discussed each in turn below.