Social Media Journeys -- Mapping Platform Migration
Artur Solomonik, Hendrik Heuer
TL;DR
This paper investigates why people migrate between social media platforms by examining sociotechnical factors that influence joining and leaving decisions. It introduces Social Media Journey Maps, a qualitative data collection method that captures migratory paths through graph-like representations, analyzed with content analysis and the Form-From taxonomy. The findings reveal that migrations are driven by environmental factors (popularity, work, communication needs) and platform affordances (security perceptions, feature timing, content formats), with locality shaping trajectories. The study offers insight for designing future platforms that foster meaningful online experiences and highlights the interaction of peer dynamics, lifecycle context, and perceived risk in platform choice.
Abstract
As people engage with the social media landscape, popular platforms rise and fall. As current research uncovers the experiences people have on various platforms, rarely do we engage with the sociotechnical migration processes when joining and leaving them. In this paper, we asked 32 visitors of a science communication festival to draw out artifacts that we call Social Media Journey Maps about the social media platforms they frequented, and why. By combining qualitative content analysis with a graph representation of Social Media Journeys, we present how social media migration processes are motivated by the interplay of environmental and platform factors. We find that peer-driven popularity, the timing of feature adoption, and personal perceptions of migration causes - such as security - shape individuals' reasoning for migrating between social media platforms. With this work, we aim to pave the way for future social media platforms that foster meaningful and enriching online experiences for users.