EAGER: CHS: Examining Self-Harm and Suicide Contagion Risks of Viral Social Media Challenges on Youth and Young Adults

EAGER：CHS：检查病毒式社交媒体挑战对青少年和年轻人的自残和自杀传染风险

• 批准号: 1832904
• 负责人: Kapil Chalil Madathil
• 金额: $ 4.21万
• 依托单位: Clemson University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-04-15 至 2021-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1832904&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAGER; CHS; Examining; Self; Harm

This project will study potentially harmful social media challenges, in which participants record themselves engaging in specific activities, share the experience in social networks, and encourage others to participate. Some challenges have positive effects. For example, the ALS Ice Bucket challenge involved people dumping a bucket of ice water over their heads to raise awareness of and funding for Lou Gehrig's disease. Others, however, encourage people to engage in behaviors that risk physical or psychological harm. For example, the Cinnamon challenge involves eating a spoonful of cinnamon, which can cause severe respiratory distress, while the Blue Whale challenge encourages a series of increasingly self-harmful behaviors culminating in suicide. Although there is much folklore and hearsay around such harmful challenges, actual studies and data about them are sparse. To address this, the project team will conduct a series of interview studies along with quantitative analysis of social network data around the Cinnamon and Blue Whale challenges. Analyses will examine both individual-level and message-level factors that lead people to participate in and spread these challenges. The results will inform the development of preventative measures to mitigate the spread of harmful viral Internet challenges. Findings will also provide a better understanding of how to protect vulnerable individuals who are exposed to the challenges from both the direct potential risks of participating and indirect potential risks (e.g., through the normalization of self-harm and peer pressure to engage in it).The project will address a number of specific research questions, including: 1) better assessing the extent to which viral social media challenges have caused real harm and pose a public health risk to social media users, and 2) identifying characteristics of both the messages containing these challenges and the individuals receiving and spreading them that predict risk, adoption, and spread of the challenges. The work is organized into two main thrusts. In the first, the team will conduct semi-structured, retrospective interviews with approximately 30 adolescent and young adult social media users (ages 13-25) and/or their families, who report being harmed or committing self-harm after engaging in social media challenges prevalent at the time of the studies. The questions will be structured to assess factors known to contribute to self-harm contagion effects (such as graphic depiction of the challenge, peer pressure, and support for self-harmful activities), as well as to probe people's own motivations and decision-making around participating in such challenges. The second main thrust involves larger-scale quantitative analysis of digital trace data about self-harmful challenges from five popular social media sites. This portion of the study will first include constructing and cleaning the dataset (both in terms of protecting personal information and capturing data relevant to the challenges). Next, the researchers will employ qualitative coding of how the challenge messages deviate from the Suicide Prevention Resource Center's evidence-based safe messaging guidelines. These analyses are intended to identify strategies that authors use to spread the challenges as well as the potential risk each poses. Finally, computational modeling will relate message characteristics to measures of message reach such as likes, views, and shares. Together, these research activities will provide much-needed empirical evidence of real-world social media behavior and individual decision-making around these harmful challenges. The data can be used to inform theory development regarding the spread of viral challenges, as well as interventions to mitigate their future harms.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该项目将研究潜在的有害社交媒体挑战，其中参与者记录自己从事特定活动，分享社交网络中的经验，并鼓励其他人参加。 一些挑战具有积极影响。例如，ALS冰桶挑战赛涉及人们在头上倾倒一桶冰水，以提高人们对Lou Gehrig病的认识和资金。 但是，其他人则鼓励人们从事风险或心理伤害的行为。例如，肉桂挑战包括吃一勺肉桂，这可能会引起严重的呼吸窘迫，而蓝鲸挑战则鼓励一系列日益自杀的行为，导致自杀。 尽管围绕如此有害挑战的民间传说和传闻，但有关它们的实际研究和数据却很少。 为了解决这个问题，项目团队将进行一系列的访谈研究，以及对肉桂和蓝鲸挑战的社交网络数据的定量分析。分析将检查个人级别和消息级别的因素，这些因素导致人们参与并传播这些挑战。结果将为预防措施的制定提供信息，以减轻有害病毒互联网挑战的传播。调查结果还将提供更好地理解如何保护易受伤害的人，这些人受到参与和间接潜在风险的直接潜在风险和间接潜在风险（例如，通过自我骚扰和同伴的压力正常化来参与其中的压力）。项目将参与其中）。包含这些挑战的消息以及接收和传播它们的个人，以预测挑战的风险，采用和传播。这项工作分为两个主要推力。 首先，该团队将对大约30名青少年和年轻的社交媒体使用者（13-25岁）和/或其家人进行半结构化的回顾性访谈，他们报告在研究时遭受社交媒体挑战后受到伤害或自我伤害。 这些问题将被构成结构，以评估已知的因素，从而有助于自我伤害触发效应（例如对挑战，同伴压力的图形描述和对自残活动的支持），以及探讨人们自己的动机和围绕参与此类挑战的决策。 第二个主要推力涉及对五个流行社交媒体网站的自我伤害挑战的数字跟踪数据进行大规模的定量分析。 该研究的这一部分将首先包括构建和清洁数据集（在保护个人信息和捕获与挑战相关的数据方面）。接下来，研究人员将采用定性编码，以了解挑战信息如何偏离自杀资源中心的基于证据的安全消息指南。这些分析旨在确定作者用来传播挑战的策略以及每个构成的潜在风险。最后，计算建模将将消息特性与消息范围（例如喜欢，视图和共享）等量度相关联。 这些研究活动共同提供了急需的经验证据，证明了现实世界中的社交媒体行为和围绕这些有害挑战的个人决策。这些数据可用于为理论发展提供有关病毒挑战的传播以及减轻其未来危害的干预措施的信息。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响审查标准，认为值得通过评估来支持。

项目成果

Evaluating News Media Reports On the Blue Whale Challenge ’ For Adherence to Suicide Prevention Safe Messaging Guidelines

评估新闻媒体对蓝鲸挑战的报道 — 遵守自杀预防安全信息指南

• DOI: 10.1145/3392831
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: Proceedings of the ACM on humancomputer interaction
• 作者: Roth, Rebecca;Abraham, Jaclyn;Zinzow, Heidi;Wisniewski, Pamela;Chalil Madathil, Kapil
• 通讯作者: Chalil Madathil, Kapil

A Study of Adolescents’ and Young Adults’ TikTok Challenge Participation in South India

• DOI: 10.1016/j.hfh.2022.100005
• 发表时间: 2022-02
• 期刊: Human Factors in Healthcare
• 作者: Rebecca Roth;P. Ajithkumar;G. Natarajan;K. Achuthan;P. Moon;H. Zinzow;K. Madathil

An Investigation on the Portrayal of Blue Whale Challenge on YouTube and Twitter

• DOI: 10.1177/1071181319631179
• 发表时间: 2019-01-01
• 期刊: Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting
• 作者: Khasawneh, Amro;Chalil Madathil, Kapil;Roth, Rebecca
• 通讯作者: Roth, Rebecca

How Affordances and Social Norms Shape the Discussion of Harmful Social Media Challenges on Reddit

• DOI: 10.1016/j.hfh.2023.100042
• 发表时间: 2023-04
• 期刊: Human Factors in Healthcare
• 作者: Jinkyung Park;Irina Lediaeva;Amy J. Godfrey;Mariana Lopez;K. Madathil;H. Zinzow;P. Wisniewski

Applying Behavioral Contagion Theory to Examining Young Adults’ Participation in Viral Social Media Challenges

应用行为传染理论来检验年轻人参与病毒式社交媒体挑战的情况

• DOI: 10.1145/3538383
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: ACM Transactions on Social Computing
• 作者: Abraham, Jaclyn;Roth, Rebecca;Zinzow, Heidi;Chalil Madathil, Kapil;Wisniewski, Pamela J.
• 通讯作者: Wisniewski, Pamela J.