[prolyxis]

It seems like it stems from a 2019 philosophy article written by Perry Zurn, titled "Busybody, Hunter, Dancer: Three Historical Modes of Curiosity."

Zurn does write "At their most basic level, a busybody is someone who is curious about other people's business," but develops the concept a bit further. Zurn says "The busybody's ideational sphere, for example, is characterized by quick associations, discrete pieces of information, and loose knowledge webs. They are interested in conceptual rarities: whatever lies outside of their knowledge grids."

Whereas the research article Zhou et al. (2024) states "Hunters build tight, constrained networks whereas busybodies build loose, broad networks." So it seems their conception of busybody roughly matches Zurn's description.

See the methods section https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn3268#sec-4 , for a description of how Zhou et al. (2014) aggregate graph theoretic metrics to define "busybody" and "hunter" styles of navigating Wikipedia.