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As social media have evolved, users have engaged with the platform, the content and each other, establishing a way of life as it pertains to online—a digital culture (Miller, 2011). Digital culture is unique in that it is shaped and reshaped so quickly, highly participatory and unpredictable (Deuze, 2006), and also because it is highly influential (Enli, 2017). Scholars and practitioners examine social media culture to understand trends (Chae, Stephen, Bart, & Yao, 2017; Jiang, Luo, & Kulemeka, 2016).
Digital culture influences the platform on which they engage, and vice versa. Digital users form virtual communities and culture (Wu Song, 2009). Members determine desired ways to interact with each other, including community-specific practices on word usage and adequate behavior (Sherman, Payton, Hernandez, Greenfield, & Dapretto, 2016). At the same time, the very online space on which users interact influences the usage and culture. That is, specific features and characteristics of social media platforms also determine a collective set of attitudes, behaviors and trends among users (Robards, 2012).
We focus specifically on how these attitudes, behaviors and trends have changed, particularly to understand why people switch to new social media. We believe that the “switch” behavior occurs in two ways: Switching from a platform and switching to a platform. Users may decide to move away from a platform due to deterrents in their current usage, but also to move toward a new platform due to incentives that attract them to do so. Drawing from pertinent literature, theoretical frameworks for understanding the decision to switch from or to a social media platform can be explained in two levels: 1) at the individual level, associated with the user’s own approval (or lack thereof) and 2) at the social level, having to do with communal interactions or pressure/appeal based on such.