Tensions in scaling-up community social media

Abstract

This paper presents a study of Nextdoor, a social media system designed to support local neighborhoods. While not the first system designed to support community engagement, Nextdoor has a number of attributes that make it distinct. Our study, across three communities in a major U.S. city, illustrates that Nextdoor inhabits an already-rich ecosystem of community-oriented social media, but is being appropriated by its users for use in different ways than these existing media. Nextdoor also raises tensions in how it defines the boundaries of neighborhoods, and in the privacy issues it raises among its users.