Exploring leadership in Facebook communities: personality traits and activities

Abstract

Leaders of online communities are today becoming key players in social media sites like Facebook. Responsible for the community's participation rules, limits and members’ identities, these leaders represent an important population on which to focus. This paper compares 94 Facebook community leaders to 94 other Internet users (N=188) in order to identify differences among them with respect to five major personality traits ("the BIG 5") as well as their online and offline activities. The results of the online surveys show that Facebook community leaders are more extroverted, open to experience, emotionally stable and active online and offline than are other Internet users. Examining the community categories, the leaders who manage Facebook support communities were found to be more introverted and less active online than leaders of other community types. The results are discussed in the context of the unique role of online leadership in the social media environment.