To quit or not to quit Twitter? The interplay of identities, perceptions, and behavioral reactions to changing platform ownership

Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now ‘X’) raised concerns about its governance and functioning. Using this as a case study, we propose a framework to analyze the interplay of social identities, perceptions, attitudes, and behavioral responses to major platform policy and ownership changes. Analyzing data from a two-wave nationally representative U.S. panel survey, we found that partisanship, after controlling for gender and race, was consistently associated with various perceptions about Twitter. Democrats evaluated Musk’s takeover and Donald Trump’s account reinstatement more negatively than Republicans. Moreover, we observed ‘lagging resistance,’ or a ‘wait-and-see mindset,’ among users: perceptions of negative impact, disagreement with Trump’s reinstatement, and distrust in Musk were associated with only intentions to reduce long-term Twitter use, not actual use after the takeover. Furthermore, our analysis revealed no clear differences across identity groups in platform migration, despite the tremendous attention it received after Musk’s takeover.