The migration of Twitter users to Mastodon following Elon Musk's acquisition presents a unique opportunity to study collective behavior and gain insights into the drivers of coordinated behavior in online media. We analyzed the social network and the public conversations of about 75,000 migrated users and observed that the temporal trace of their migrations is compatible with a phenomenon of social influence, as described by a compartmental epidemic model of information diffusion. Drawing from prior research on behavioral change, we delved into the factors that account for variations across different Twitter communities in the effectiveness of the spreading of the influence to migrate. Communities in which the influence process unfolded more rapidly exhibit lower density of social connections, higher levels of signaled commitment to migrating, and more emphasis on shared identity and exchange of factual knowledge in the community discussion. These factors account collectively for 57% of the variance in the observed data. Our results highlight the joint importance of network structure, commitment, and psycho-linguistic aspects of social interactions in describing grassroots collective action, and contribute to deepen our understanding of the mechanisms driving processes of behavior change of online groups.

翻译：埃隆·马斯克收购推特后，用户向Mastodon的迁移为研究集体行为以及洞察在线媒体中协调行为的驱动因素提供了独特契机。我们分析了约7.5万名迁移用户的社交网络与公共对话，观察到其迁移的时间轨迹与信息扩散的房室流行病模型所描述的社会影响现象相吻合。基于过往关于行为变化的研究，我们深入探究了造成不同推特社群在迁移影响传播效果上差异的因素。在此影响过程展开更迅速的社群中，社交连接密度更低、迁移承诺信号更强烈、且社群讨论中更强调共同身份与事实性知识交流。这些因素共同解释了观测数据中57%的方差。我们的研究结果凸显了网络结构、承诺以及社交互动的心理语言层面在描述草根集体行动中的共同重要性，并有助于深化对驱动在线群体行为变化过程机制的理解。