They said what? Exploring the relationship between language use and member satisfaction in communities

Abstract

In online communities, satisfied members are essential to community success, since they are more likely to contribute and consume content, engage with other members, and feel committed to the community. However, it is difficult for community leaders to know, on an on-going basis, whether members are satisfied. In this paper, we explore the relationship between member satisfaction and language use within content posted in workplace online communities. We hope to find patterns of language use that are associated with satisfied members. We employ linguistic analysis based on LIWC, and a survey to directly measure member satisfaction in 142 workplace communities. We contribute a better understanding of how members interact in effective workplace communities, and show that linguistic analysis could be a useful part of future methods to automatically assess community member satisfaction.