CHS: EAGER: Handling Online Risks and Creating Safe Spaces: Content Moderation in Live Streaming Micro Communities

本研究将从技术和社会两方面调查个人和小团体如何在直播的背景下实时处理内容审核，区分以创作内容为生的专业内容创作者和业余爱好者。Twitch等流媒体直播服务是最新形式的社交媒体，它将用户生成的内容与传统的电视直播概念结合在一起：当有人在直播时，观众可以在与直播一起显示的聊天界面中发表评论，从而创造出一种互动的同步媒体体验。然而，这种实时互动使平台为越轨行为提供了条件，因为潜在的骚扰者可以直观地看到他们的严厉言论对正在播放的人的直接影响。目前大多数形式的社交媒体都依赖于众包的审核方式，即用户报告不良内容，最终由人工版主进行审核。这在实时节制的背景下并不奏效，带来了更大的社会和技术挑战。该项目将从直播平台微社区的角度研究如何提高对内容审核的社会技术层面的理解。通过了解流媒体目前如何通过人工和自动化劳动来调节观众，该研究将确定技术协助和增强调节过程的机会，并为可持续和可扩展的调节提供指导。对不同的适度治理结构的探索也可能有助于洞察社交媒体未来的替代性适度模式，并了解不同的适度做法如何影响微社区中积极和消极规范的演变。由于直播是一种新现象，呈现出新的技术和社会挑战，因此在通过技术设计认真尝试解决其问题之前，需要进行探索性研究。本研究议程将从定性角度推进适度如何影响微社区社会规范发展的知识，为未来大规模实证研究、实验和开发有用的人工智能工具奠定基础。该研究将能够确定在中庸实践中使用的方法的广度，通过建立中庸的分类，将产生一个理解中庸概念功能的综合框架，并为学者和从业者开发一种通用语言，使问题和潜在的设计解决方案之间的映射成为可能。此外，通过民族志工作，该研究将提供这种新形式的社交媒体的描述性知识，从而产生这种特定技术特有的新颖研究问题。这项研究将为审核工具和实践的设计提供信息，这些工具和实践可能会影响数百万在线发布内容的人，甚至更多的人会查看这些内容。通过关注个体生产者，而不是运行系统的公司，作为他们自己系统的中心，这些发现可能会推动一个互联网活动的新时代，在这个时代，个人和小团体对网上发生的事情有更多的代理。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This research will investigate how individuals and small groups handle content moderation real time in the context of live streaming, from both technical and social perspectives, distinguishing between professional content creators who create content for a living, and hobbyists. Live streaming services such as Twitch are the latest form of social media that marries user-generated content with the traditional concept of live television broadcasting: as someone broadcasts, viewers can post comments in a chat interface that is displayed alongside the broadcast, creating an interactive synchronous media experience. This real-time interaction, however, makes the platform ripe for deviant behavior, as potential harassers can visually see the immediate impact of their harsh words on the person who is broadcasting. Most current forms of social media rely on crowdsourced methods of moderation, where users report bad content that is ultimately reviewed by a human moderator. This does not work well in the context of real-time moderation, posing greater social and technological challenges. This project will study approaches to improving understanding of the sociotechnical aspects of content moderation from the perspective of micro communities on live streaming platforms. By understanding how streamers currently moderate audiences through manual and automated labor, the research will identify opportunities for technology to assist and enhance the moderation process and provide guidelines for sustainable and scalable moderation. Exploration of different governance structures of moderation may also yield insights into alternative models of moderation for the future of social media and understanding of how different moderation practices may influence the evolution of positive and negative norms in micro communities. Because live streaming is such a new phenomenon, presenting novel technical and social challenges, exploratory research is required before any serious attempt to solve its problems through technology design. This research agenda will advance knowledge about how moderation influences the development of social norms in micro communities from a qualitative perspective, laying the groundwork for future large-scale empirical studies, experiments, and development of useful artificial intelligence tools. The research will be able to identify the breadth of methods that are employed in the practice of moderation that will yield a comprehensive framework of understanding the conceptual functions of moderation by building a taxonomy of moderation, and develop a common language for both academics and practitioners that enables mapping between problems and potential design solutions. Moreover, through ethnographic work, the research will provide descriptive knowledge of this new form of social media that results in novel research questions unique to this particular technology. This research will inform design of moderation tools and practices that could impact millions of people who publish content online and yet even more people who view that content. By focusing on the individual producer, rather than the corporation running the system, as the center of their own system, the findings may be able to empower a new era of Internet activity in which individuals and small groups have more agency over what happens online.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.