Can Social Media Anti-abuse Policies Work? A Quasi-experimental Study of Online Sexist and Racist Slurs
Can Social Media Anti-abuse Policies Work? A Quasi-experimental Study of Online Sexist and Racist Slurs
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DOI：
10.1177/2378023120948711
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发表时间：
2020-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
4.5
通讯作者：
Matthews, Stephen A.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Felmlee, Diane;DellaPosta, Daniel;Matthews, Stephen A.
作者利用Twitter关于滥用内容的规则变化的时机来测试旨在阻止在线骚扰的组织政策的有效性。社会控制的制度主义理论认为，如果这些干预措施被认为是合法的，那么它们可能是有效的，而心理抗拒理论则认为，使用者可能反而会加剧攻击行为，以回应制裁当局。在推特政策改变前后一个月的360万条推文样本中，作者发现，针对女性和/或非裔美国人的侮蔑推文的平均情绪出现了适度的积极变化。作者通过跟踪特定tweet和个人用户的网络传播进一步说明了这一趋势。转发的消息比没有转发的消息更消极。这些模式表明，组织的“反滥用”政策可以在遏制社交媒体上的仇恨言论方面发挥作用，而不会引发进一步的滥用。
The authors use the timing of a change in Twitter's rules regarding abusive content to test the effectiveness of organizational policies aimed at stemming online harassment. Institutionalist theories of social control suggest that such interventions can be efficacious if they are perceived as legitimate, whereas theories of psychological reactance suggest that users may instead ratchet up aggressive behavior in response to the sanctioning authority. In a sample of 3.6 million tweets spanning one month before and one month after Twitter's policy change, the authors find evidence of a modest positive shift in the average sentiment of tweets with slurs targeting women and/or African Americans. The authors further illustrate this trend by tracking the network spread of specific tweets and individual users. Retweeted messages are more negative than those not forwarded. These patterns suggest that organizational "anti-abuse" policies can play a role in stemming hateful speech on social media without inflaming further abuse.