Virtual communities? the middle east revolutions at the Guardian forum: Comment Is Free

Abstract

We investigate the possibility of virtual community formation in an online social network under a rapid increase of activity of members and newcomers. The evolution is studied of the activity of online users at the Guardian - Comment Is Free forum - covering topics related to the Middle East turmoil during the period of 1st of January 2010 to the 28th of March 2011. Despite a threefold upsurge of forum users and the formation of a giant component, the main network characteristics, i.e. degree and weight distribution and clustering coefficient, remained almost unchanged.