Elon Musk, Platform Ownership, User Participation, and the Governance of Twitter

• In Event: (Social) Media Ownership and Governance

Abstract

With social media platforms increasingly sinking into nearly all aspects of society (Van Dijck, 2021) and concerns over the spread of mis- and dis-information on various platforms (Grinberg et al., 2019), platform governance has come to public, media, and academic spotlight in recent years. Platform governance involves multiple players, including “platform companies, users, advertisers, governments, and other political actors” (Gorwa, 2019). In particular, some platforms are significantly tied to their owners, like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Jack Dorsey of Twitter, and Donald Trump of Truth Social. Most recently, Elon Musk’s takeover of one of the most influential platforms, Twitter, has ignited debates about privatization of public sphere, content moderation (and restoration of controversial accounts), and their political consequences. This raises questions about the role that a single person can/should have in impacting public discourse on a platform. Building on platform governance (Van Dijck & Poell, 2013) and social media public opinion (Zhang et al., 2022) scholarship, we conceptualize social media discourses surrounding platform governance as an expression of public opinion and an object with business impact. By examining how platform ownership change might impact the intensity of, engagement with, and topics in platform governance discourses, we seek to contribute to our understanding of how the democratic and capitalist aspects of platforms are intertwined.

Our empirical analysis is situated in the context of Elon Musk’s Twitter acquisition. On April 5, 2022, Elon Musk announced that he bought over 9% of Twitter’s shares, and on April 14 he offered to buy this platform. He officially became Twitter’s owner on October 27, 2022 after a series of legal maneuvers. These incidents sparked heated discussions on Twitter about Musk’s takeover and stimulated speculations and vows to stay on, leave, or come back to Twitter. This dramatic saga of Musk’s Twitter purchase serves as a perfect context for constructing our theoretical knowledge on social media discourses on platform governance. Social media platforms straddle two logics: a democratic commitment (at least nominally) to creating a vibrant public space for public good and an economic obligation to generate profits for stakeholders. As an expression of public opinion on platform governance, Twitter users’ response to Musk’s takeover should be heeded if Twitter is genuine and serious about enhancing democracy. Simultaneously, Twitter users’ response is involved in and has consequences for platform business. In the short term, the greater intensity and duration of the response, the more profitable it is for the platform. In the long run, users’ expression of (dis)satisfaction with Musk’s takeover can translate into increased or decreased user activity and engagement, which directly impact the platform’s economic interests. We ask the following two questions, with attention to the open nature of social media platforms and the different demographics they bring together:
RQ1: How did the level of user activity and engagement surrounding Musk’s Twitter takeover change over time among different user groups on Twitter?
RQ2: How did Twitter public opinion on Musk’s Twitter takeover shift over time among different user groups on Twitter?

Through the Twitter API product track for academic research, which provides access to all publicly available tweets, we collected all tweets containing keywords associated with Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase: "elon," "musk," "@elonmusk," "#elon_musk," "#elonmusk," "#elonmuskbuytwitter," "#elonmuskbuystwitter," "#twittertakeover," "#unbanned," "#leavingtwitter," and "#deletetwitter" from the initial proposal (April 5, day of Musk’s buyout, to April 30) and the formal acquisition (from October 20, a week before Musk’s takeover, to November 31). Next, we are going to conduct a retweet network analysis to identify different groups of users in the discourses and structural topic modeling to discover different topics in the discourses among different groups before and after the takeover (Egami et al., 2022). Using these techniques, we can quantify the shift in the level of activity and engagement among different groups of users and in the topics they discussed related to the takeover. We might find intensive and diverse discussions from all groups throughout, suggesting low incentives for Twitter to heed public opinion. Alternatively, we might find users opposing the purchase phasing out their activity en masse, which cannot be compensated for by users cheering it. Though our study is a case study, it has general implications for understanding whether platform governance can be democratic when social media platforms serve as the space for the public to discuss platform governance.

Authors

• Yini Zhang

• Jiyoun Suk, University of Connecticut

• Sara Holland Levin, University of Connecticut

• Rui Wang, University at Buffalo