CHS: Small: Scaffolding Data-Centered Interactions in Online Civic Discussions

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This project seeks to increase the level of evidence-based discussion at news websites by creating scaffolding that supports data-literate contributions and by adopting concepts from crowdsourcing such as micro-task workflows, incentives, and quality control. The research vision is twofold: (1) to help individuals form a deeper understanding of a civic issue so that their contributions are more valuable, and (2) to layer these contributions back into the original news article so that the narrative and data presentation continually improve for people just entering the discussion. Communities everywhere grapple with civic issues, such as housing, mobility, and climate change. Online discussion systems offer a unique opportunity for diverse audiences to collaboratively build insights around a civic issue, but these systems rarely reach their potential. At best, online discussions give people a chance to express opinions, but all too often they become breeding grounds for trolling and misinformation. The volume of comments can overwhelm moderators, making it difficult to highlight well-reasoned insights that can advance a community. This research aims to advance technologies that scaffold data-centered contributions in order to help communities interact constructively around evidence. The research will (1) characterize the current state of data-centered discussion by analyzing the past ten years of online commenting on three popular news websites, (2) develop and compare scaffolding techniques based on data literacy education that would orient people to offer data-centered observations, critiques, and improvements, (3) conduct controlled experiments to evaluate how these scaffolds affect personal outcomes like comprehension and data literacy, discussion behavior such as reciprocity, and community outcomes including polarization, and (4) develop and evaluate novel online discussion technology through real-world deployments in a project-based classroom focused on climate change and as part of a civic design competition. All research products - including data sets, analysis methods, and source code - will be made available to other researchers exploring online discourse, data science, visualization, and civic design.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.