The Atlantic, the Conversation cite Dym study about fandom communities online
In an article about whether Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter will lead to an exodus from the platform, the Atlantic and the Conversation cited a study co-authored by Brianna Dym, lecturer at the School of Computing and Information Science at the University of Maine, looking at why fandom communities migrated from platforms such as LiveJournal and FanFiction.Net to Tumblr in the early 2010s. The research highlighted that — as with real-world migration — there are both “push” and “pull” factors at play when people decide to leap from one platform to another. Dym spoke to the Atlantic to distinguish Twitter’s current situation from what happened to LiveJournal. “The death knell for LiveJournal had been rung already. With Twitter, it’s different in that, you know, this is the first major upset in Twitter’s history,” Dym said. For people to really start leaving on a large scale, she predicted, Musk would have to make significant changes that “erode trust in the platform.” Salon, Yahoo News, Fast Company, IFL Science, the Houston Chronicle (Houston, Texas), Plainview Herald (Plainview, Texas), Chronicle-Tribune (Marion, Indiana), Skagit Valley Herald (Skagit, Washington) and other outlets shared the Conversation article.