Spillovers in networks of user generated content: Evidence from 23 natural experiments on Wikipedia

Michael E. Kummer

No 13-098, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: Endogeneity in network formation hinders the identification of the role social networks play in generating spillovers, peer effects and other externalities. This paper tackles this problem and investigates how the link network between articles on the German Wikipedia influences the attention and content generation individual articles receive. Identification exploits local exogenous shocks on a small number of nodes in the network. It can thus avoid the usually required, but strong, assumptions of exogenous observed characteristics and link structure in networks. This approach also applies if, due to a lack of network information, identification through partial overlaps in the network structure fails (e.g. in classrooms). Exogenous variation is generated by natural and technical disasters or by articles being featured on the German Wikipedia's start page. The effects on neighboring pages are substantial; I observe an increase of almost 100 percent in terms of both views and content generation. The aggregate effect over all neighbors is also large: I find that a view on a treated article converts one for one into a view on a neighboring article. However, the resulting content generation is small in absolute terms.

Keywords: Social Media; Information; Knowledge; Spillovers; Large-scale Networks; Natural Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D29 D62 D85 L17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gth, nep-ict, nep-net and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:13098

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