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Why Are User-Generated Contents So Varied? An Explanation Based on Variety-Seeking Theory and Topic Modeling

In online communities, such as Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit, millions of pieces of contents are generated by users every day, and these user-generated contents (UGCs) show a great variety of topics discussed that make the online community vivid and attractive. However, the reasons why UGCs show grea...

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Autores principales: Xiang, Weilin, Ma, Yongbin, Liu, Dewen, Zhang, Sikang
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8960714/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35360616
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.808785
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author Xiang, Weilin
Ma, Yongbin
Liu, Dewen
Zhang, Sikang
author_facet Xiang, Weilin
Ma, Yongbin
Liu, Dewen
Zhang, Sikang
author_sort Xiang, Weilin
collection PubMed
description In online communities, such as Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit, millions of pieces of contents are generated by users every day, and these user-generated contents (UGCs) show a great variety of topics discussed that make the online community vivid and attractive. However, the reasons why UGCs show great variety and how a firm can influence this variety was unknown, which had been an obstacle to understanding and managing UGCs’ variety. This study fills these two gaps based on variety-seeking theory and topic modeling, which is a technique in machine learning. We extract, quantitatively, the topic of the UGCs using topic modeling and divide UGCs into two types: single topic and multiple topics. The user’s tendency to choose the type of UGC is used to measure variety-seeking behavior. We found that users have an intrinsic preference for variety when producing UGCs; the more single topic UGCs were produced in the past, the higher the probability of producing multiple topics UGC and the lower the probability of producing single topic UGC would be in the next, and vice versa. Furthermore, we discussed the effect of language/linguistic style matching (LSM) between firm feedbacks and UGCs on users’ variety-seeking tendencies in UGCs’ production. This study makes three contributions: (1) broadening variety-seeking theory to new behavior, that is content production behavior, and the results demonstrated that people would show a variety-seeking behavior in producing UGCs. (2) a new feasible method to measure the variety of UGCs by using topic modeling to extract the topics of UGCs and then measure the variety-seeking behavior in producing UGCs by analyzing the choice between single topic and multiple topics. (3) guidance for the firm to alter LSM of feedbacks to influence the variety of UGCs.
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spelling pubmed-89607142022-03-30 Why Are User-Generated Contents So Varied? An Explanation Based on Variety-Seeking Theory and Topic Modeling Xiang, Weilin Ma, Yongbin Liu, Dewen Zhang, Sikang Front Psychol Psychology In online communities, such as Twitter, Facebook, or Reddit, millions of pieces of contents are generated by users every day, and these user-generated contents (UGCs) show a great variety of topics discussed that make the online community vivid and attractive. However, the reasons why UGCs show great variety and how a firm can influence this variety was unknown, which had been an obstacle to understanding and managing UGCs’ variety. This study fills these two gaps based on variety-seeking theory and topic modeling, which is a technique in machine learning. We extract, quantitatively, the topic of the UGCs using topic modeling and divide UGCs into two types: single topic and multiple topics. The user’s tendency to choose the type of UGC is used to measure variety-seeking behavior. We found that users have an intrinsic preference for variety when producing UGCs; the more single topic UGCs were produced in the past, the higher the probability of producing multiple topics UGC and the lower the probability of producing single topic UGC would be in the next, and vice versa. Furthermore, we discussed the effect of language/linguistic style matching (LSM) between firm feedbacks and UGCs on users’ variety-seeking tendencies in UGCs’ production. This study makes three contributions: (1) broadening variety-seeking theory to new behavior, that is content production behavior, and the results demonstrated that people would show a variety-seeking behavior in producing UGCs. (2) a new feasible method to measure the variety of UGCs by using topic modeling to extract the topics of UGCs and then measure the variety-seeking behavior in producing UGCs by analyzing the choice between single topic and multiple topics. (3) guidance for the firm to alter LSM of feedbacks to influence the variety of UGCs. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-03-10 /pmc/articles/PMC8960714/ /pubmed/35360616 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.808785 Text en Copyright © 2022 Xiang, Ma, Liu and Zhang. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Xiang, Weilin
Ma, Yongbin
Liu, Dewen
Zhang, Sikang
Why Are User-Generated Contents So Varied? An Explanation Based on Variety-Seeking Theory and Topic Modeling
title Why Are User-Generated Contents So Varied? An Explanation Based on Variety-Seeking Theory and Topic Modeling
title_full Why Are User-Generated Contents So Varied? An Explanation Based on Variety-Seeking Theory and Topic Modeling
title_fullStr Why Are User-Generated Contents So Varied? An Explanation Based on Variety-Seeking Theory and Topic Modeling
title_full_unstemmed Why Are User-Generated Contents So Varied? An Explanation Based on Variety-Seeking Theory and Topic Modeling
title_short Why Are User-Generated Contents So Varied? An Explanation Based on Variety-Seeking Theory and Topic Modeling
title_sort why are user-generated contents so varied? an explanation based on variety-seeking theory and topic modeling
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8960714/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35360616
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.808785
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