Determine whether repeat reposting reaches the repeater’s followers

Determine whether the additional readers generated by repeat reposting are members of the repeating account’s follower audience.

Background

The study interprets repeat reposting primarily as repeated coverage of an existing audience rather than as diffusion to new audiences. It estimates the repeater’s reach from prior cascade activity because follower counts, impressions, timeline positions, and actual views are unavailable.

Consequently, the observed association between a repeater’s estimated reach and subsequent cascade growth cannot establish whether the additional unique reactors are specifically drawn from that repeater’s followers. Direct exposure or audience-overlap data would be needed to resolve this question.

References

In this data, however, we do not observe whether the added readers are the repeater's followers.

— Attentional DoS: Repeat Reposting, Collective Attention, and Information Diffusion on X  (2609.35385 - Toya et al., 28 Sep 2026) in Section 6.1, “Amplification Is Not Diffusion”