Post-Spotlight Posts: The Impact of Sudden Social Media Attention on Account Behavior

Within social media communities, sudden attention is a frequent phenomenon where a particular user receives a rapid onset of heightened engagement. Using a statistical analysis, we examine the impacts that this outsized attention has on the subsequent behavior of accounts who received sudden social media attention for Twitter posts in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. We find that accounts that received sudden social media attention were more likely to post after receiving sudden social media attention, though this effect was not persistent and did not boost original content production. We also find that these accounts were significantly more likely to alter their self-presentation through updating their “bio” after receiving suddenly increased attention.