This is a subject I’ve been thinking about for a long time: the old eparticipation problem of lurkers. I described the challenges of understanding posting to a non-responsive audience in blog posts here and here, back in 2017, when I was getting my thoughts together. (Academic writing and publication is not a fast process.)
One of my very first areas of academic research dealt with the transition from lurking to engagement with epetitioning systems.
This paper takes a different perspective: why (and when) do representatives share information even when they know there will be no response? That is, what is the response by democratic practitioners to the problem of lurkers? It turns out that feeling of duty and acting out their role as a representative are a significant motivation here. (That is, there is no expectation of a payback).
This paper takes an information science approach (specifically information practice), and I co-authored it with Prof Hazel Hall, who was able to turn it into a much clearer piece of writing, as well as adding her own perspectives and deep knowlege of the LIS domain. You can find her write up of the work here.
The theoretical development is to introduce the idea of information sharing by proxy: that is, extending the understanding of how and when people share information to include the idea of the duty to share because no-one else has done so yet.
The article has been accepted for publication by Information Research (they really need to invest in an HTTPS certificate), but author’s copies can already be downloaded from here at Napier document repository.
Spartakan 
Hi Peter
I took part in an MSc Leadership and ICT programme you lectured at back a few years ago in Wales, you may recall travelling down to a hotel in Penarth to deliver your sessions. Anyway my point is the organisation I run is currently working remotely and we are supporting groups of parents using Facebook Messenger. Some of the groups have been taken on by volunteers and every morning post a ‘Hello how is everyone’ to which they get a series of responses, but one of our groups doesn’t. Every morning the volunteer posts how is everyone, and nothing, no response, we know they are there, she then goes on to have a conversation with herself, and still no response. My point is and i have been pondering this over the past 3 weeks, why is she continuing to post…maybe as you say in your paper, its a sense of duty?