“Only visible for three days”: Mining microblogs to understand reasons for using the Time Limit setting on WeChat Moments

Abstract

Social media platforms are increasingly implementing ephemerality settings to meet users' need to manage past posts. However, few studies discuss factors influencing the use of ephemerality-related designs on social media. Using a text mining approach, we explore users’ main reasons for choosing the Time Limit setting on WeChat Moments. We apply the latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) method to analyze a dataset of 26,059 Weibo microblogs and comments relating to the use of the three-day limit on WeChat Moments. Our results indicate that evolving self-presentation, life changes, changes to the social network, the burden of impression management, the desire to retain a sense of mystery, privacy protection, mood state, and the use of substitute platforms are potential factors. We further indicate that changes in life and social networks may lead to evolving self-presentation and increase the burden of impression management. Our findings may provide a foundation for further scholarly exploration of ephemerality on social media and inspire practitioners to design more granular ephemerality settings.