From Web(logs) to Web(AI): Questions, Platforms, and Methods across Twenty Editions of ICWSM

Abstract

Over twenty editions, the ICWSM community has examined social life online as platforms, interactions, and research methods have changed. What can this body of research tell us at this critical juncture, as AI increasingly reshapes how people communicate online? We analyzed 2,139 indexed contributions from 2007 to 2026, distinguishing topics identified through nonnegative matrix factorization from problem framings captured through explicit textual cues. We find that platform mentions shift from blogs toward Twitter and, more recently, Reddit. Online community research maintains a similar topic share (10.5% to 10.0%), but governance cues within it increase from 4.0% to 34.3%. Harm-related cues also increase after restricting abstracts to a fixed length. Our review also traces advances in sampling, measurement, and causal and experimental methods. We discuss how AI-mediated interactions complicate these questions and provide a reporting checklist to support research across changing platforms.