Tweetment Effects on the Tweeted: Experimentally Reducing Racist Harassment
TL;DR: The authors examined the impact of group norm promotion and social sanctioning on racist online harassment and found that subjects who were sanctioned by a high-follower white male significantly reduced their use of a racist slur.
Abstract: I conduct an experiment which examines the impact of group norm promotion and social sanctioning on racist online harassment. Racist online harassment de-mobilizes the minorities it targets, and the open, unopposed expression of racism in a public forum can legitimize racist viewpoints and prime ethnocentrism. I employ an intervention designed to reduce the use of anti-black racist slurs by white men on Twitter. I collect a sample of Twitter users who have harassed other users and use accounts I control (“bots”) to sanction the harassers. By varying the identity of the bots between in-group (white man) and out-group (black man) and by varying the number of Twitter followers each bot has, I find that subjects who were sanctioned by a high-follower white male significantly reduced their use of a racist slur. This paper extends findings from lab experiments to a naturalistic setting using an objective, behavioral outcome measure and a continuous 2-month data collection period. This represents an advance in the study of prejudiced behavior.
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TL;DR: It is found that the veracity of headlines has little effect on sharing intentions, despite having a large effect on judgments of accuracy, and that subtly shifting attention to accuracy increases the quality of news that people subsequently share.
Abstract: In recent years, there has been a great deal of concern about the proliferation of false and misleading news on social media1–4. Academics and practitioners alike have asked why people share such misinformation, and sought solutions to reduce the sharing of misinformation5–7. Here, we attempt to address both of these questions. First, we find that the veracity of headlines has little effect on sharing intentions, despite having a large effect on judgments of accuracy. This dissociation suggests that sharing does not necessarily indicate belief. Nonetheless, most participants say it is important to share only accurate news. To shed light on this apparent contradiction, we carried out four survey experiments and a field experiment on Twitter; the results show that subtly shifting attention to accuracy increases the quality of news that people subsequently share. Together with additional computational analyses, these findings indicate that people often share misinformation because their attention is focused on factors other than accuracy—and therefore they fail to implement a strongly held preference for accurate sharing. Our results challenge the popular claim that people value partisanship over accuracy8,9, and provide evidence for scalable attention-based interventions that social media platforms could easily implement to counter misinformation online. Surveys and a field experiment with Twitter users show that prompting people to think about the accuracy of news sources increases the quality of the news that they share online.
349 citations
TL;DR: The results suggest that while a single correction from another user did not reduce misperceptions, the CDC on its own could correct misinformation, and Corrections were more effective among those higher in initial misperception.
Abstract: This study tests whether the number (1 vs. 2) and the source (another user vs. the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC]) of corrective responses affect successful reduction of mispercep...
268 citations
Cites background from "Tweetment Effects on the Tweeted: E..."
...Research suggests that sanctions from high-status Twitter accounts can reduce racism in subsequent tweets (Munger, 2017); future research should examine how individuals respond if their own tweets are corrected by the CDC or another reputable organization....
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...Likewise, future research should also test whether social cues—such as the number of followers for an account or the number of “likes” for a correction—can enhance the effectiveness of corrective efforts (Munger, 2017)....
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TL;DR: The authors synthesize a burgeoning literature investigating why people believe and share false or highly misleading news online and find that people are better at discerning truth from falsehood when evaluating politically concordant news.
246 citations
TL;DR: It is shown that bots acting with small levels of random noise and placed in central locations meaningfully improve the collective performance of human groups, accelerating the median solution time by 55.6%.
Abstract: A networked colour coordination game, with humans interacting with autonomous software bots, shows that bots acting with small levels of random noise and being placed centrally in the network improves not only human–bot interactions but also human–human interactions at distant nodes. Collective action towards a common goal, even if everyone's interests are aligned, faces a 'coordination' problem: an individual's attempts to reach a personal, locally optimized solution may not be optimal for the group as a whole. Now Nicholas Christakis and colleagues have introduced autonomous software ('bots') in small networks of humans engaged in solving a standard colour coordination game in which the collective goal is for every node to have a colour different from all of its neighbour nodes, so as to study the potential benefits of introducing noise in the decision making. They find that noisy bots work best when displaying moderate (10%) randomness and placed centrally in the network. Such bots not only improve human–bot but also human–human interactions at distant nodes, thus helping humans to help themselves. Coordination in groups faces a sub-optimization problem1,2,3,4,5,6 and theory suggests that some randomness may help to achieve global optima7,8,9. Here we performed experiments involving a networked colour coordination game10 in which groups of humans interacted with autonomous software agents (known as bots). Subjects (n = 4,000) were embedded in networks (n = 230) of 20 nodes, to which we sometimes added 3 bots. The bots were programmed with varying levels of behavioural randomness and different geodesic locations. We show that bots acting with small levels of random noise and placed in central locations meaningfully improve the collective performance of human groups, accelerating the median solution time by 55.6%. This is especially the case when the coordination problem is hard. Behavioural randomness worked not only by making the task of humans to whom the bots were connected easier, but also by affecting the gameplay of the humans among themselves and hence creating further cascades of benefit in global coordination in these heterogeneous systems.
209 citations
23 Apr 2018
TL;DR: This work study intercommunity interactions across 36,000 communities on Reddit, examining cases where users of one community are mobilized by negative sentiment to comment in another community, and finds that conflicts are marked by formation of echo chambers.
Abstract: Users organize themselves into communities on web platforms. These communities can interact with one another, often leading to conflicts and toxic interactions. However, little is known about the mechanisms of interactions between communities and how they impact users. Here we study intercommunity interactions across 36,000 communities on Reddit, examining cases where users of one community are mobilized by negative sentiment to comment in another community. We show that such conflicts tend to be initiated by a handful of communities---less than 1% of communities start 74% of conflicts. While conflicts tend to be initiated by highly active community members, they are carried out by significantly less active members. We find that conflicts are marked by formation of echo chambers, where users primarily talk to other users from their own community. In the long-term, conflicts have adverse effects and reduce the overall activity of users in the targeted communities. Our analysis of user interactions also suggests strategies for mitigating the negative impact of conflicts---such as increasing direct engagement between attackers and defenders. Further, we accurately predict whether a conflict will occur by creating a novel LSTM model that combines graph embeddings, user, community, and text features. This model can be used to create an early-warning system for community moderators to prevent conflicts. Altogether, this work presents a data-driven view of community interactions and conflict, and paves the way towards healthier online communities.
193 citations
Cites background from "Tweetment Effects on the Tweeted: E..."
...forms has focused primarily on controversies [3, 13, 20, 21, 45, 52] and anti-social behavior, in the form of trolling [11, 12, 42], sockpuppetry [39], harassment and cyberbullying [8, 23, 32, 35, 55, 66, 79], vandalism [43], hate speech [9, 15, 51, 56, 72], and others [17, 24, 40, 41, 44, 46, 54, 68, 78, 81]....
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References
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01 Jan 2001
14,106 citations
"Tweetment Effects on the Tweeted: E..." refers methods in this paper
...I varied two aspects of the bots, resulting in a 2 9 2 experimental design: the first dimension of variation was the identity of the bot, to test the finding from Social Identity Theory that sanctioning by members of a person’s in-group is more effective (Tajfel and Turner 1979)....
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Book•
01 Jan 1954TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe the dynamics of prejudgment, including: Frustration, Aggression and Hatred, Anxiety, Sex, and Guilt, Demagogy, and Tolerant Personality.
Abstract: Preferential Thinking * What Is the Problem? * The Normality of Prejudgment * Formation of In-Groups * Rejection of Out-Groups * Patterning and Extent of Prejudice Group Differences * The Scientific Study of Group Differences * Racial and Ethnic Differences * Visibility and Strangeness * Traits Due to Victimization Perceiving And Thinking About Group Differences * The Cognitive Process * Linguistic Factors * Stereotypes in Our Culture * Theories of Prejudice Sociocultural Factors * Social Structure And Cultural Pattern * Choice of Scapegoats * The Effect of Contact * Acquiring Prejudice * Conforming * The Young Child * Later Learning * Inner Conflict The Dynamics Of Prejudice * Frustration * Aggression and Hatred * Anxiety, Sex, and Guilt * Projection Character Structure * The Prejudiced Personality * Demagogy * The Tolerant Personality * Religion and Prejudice Reducing Group Tensions * Ought There to Be a Law? * Evaluation of Programs * Limitations and Horizons
13,470 citations
TL;DR: The meta-analysis finds that intergroup contact typically reduces intergroup prejudice, and this result suggests that contact theory, devised originally for racial and ethnic encounters, can be extended to other groups.
Abstract: The present article presents a meta-analytic test of intergroup contact theory. With 713 independent samples from 515 studies, the meta-analysis finds that intergroup contact typically reduces intergroup prejudice. Multiple tests indicate that this finding appears not to result from either participant selection or publication biases, and the more rigorous studies yield larger mean effects. These contact effects typically generalize to the entire outgroup, and they emerge across a broad range of outgroup targets and contact settings. Similar patterns also emerge for samples with racial or ethnic targets and samples with other targets. This result suggests that contact theory, devised originally for racial and ethnic encounters, can be extended to other groups. A global indicator of Allport's optimal contact conditions demonstrates that contact under these conditions typically leads to even greater reduction in prejudice. Closer examination demonstrates that these conditions are best conceptualized as an interrelated bundle rather than as independent factors. Further, the meta-analytic findings indicate that these conditions are not essential for prejudice reduction. Hence, future work should focus on negative factors that prevent intergroup contact from diminishing prejudice as well as the development of a more comprehensive theory of intergroup contact.
6,629 citations
"Tweetment Effects on the Tweeted: E..." refers background in this paper
...A comprehensive review finds only mild support for the contact hypothesis (Pettigrew and Tropp 2006), and others note...
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...A comprehensive review finds only mild support for the contact hypothesis (Pettigrew and Tropp 2006), and others note that the subject makes isolating causation difficult (Binder et al. 2009)....
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TL;DR: The authors reviewed the history of computer mediated communication and found that impersonal communication is sometimes advantageous, and strategies for the intentional depersonalization of media use are inferred, with implications for Group Decision Support Systems effects.
Abstract: While computer-mediated communication use and research are proliferating rapidly, findings offer contrasting images regarding the interpersonal character of this technology. Research trends over the history of these media are reviewed with observations across trends suggested so as to provide integrative principles with which to apply media to different circumstances. First, the notion that the media reduce personal influences—their impersonal effects—is reviewed. Newer theories and research are noted explaining normative “interpersonal” uses of the media. From this vantage point, recognizing that impersonal communication is sometimes advantageous, strategies for the intentional depersonalization of media use are inferred, with implications for Group Decision Support Systems effects. Additionally, recognizing that media sometimes facilitate communication that surpasses normal interpersonal levels, a new perspective on “hyperpersonal” communication is introduced. Subprocesses are discussed pertaining to re...
4,401 citations
TL;DR: A review of research and theory on the motivations for maintaining ingroup boundaries and the implications of ingroup boundary protection for intergroup relations, conflict, and conflict prevention can be found in this paper.
Abstract: Allport (1954) recognized that attachment to one's ingroups does not necessarily require hostility toward outgroups. Yet the prevailing approach to the study of ethnocentrism, ingroup bias, and prejudice presumes that ingroup love and outgroup hate are reciprocally related. Findings from both cross-cultural research and laboratory experiments support the alternative view that ingroup identification is independent of negative attitudes toward outgroups and that much ingroup bias and intergroup discrimination is motivated by preferential treatment of ingroup members rather than direct hostility toward outgroup members. Thus to understand the roots of prejudice and discrimination requires first of all a better understanding of the functions that ingroup formation and identification serve for human beings. This article reviews research and theory on the motivations for maintenance of ingroup boundaries and the implications of ingroup boundary protection for intergroup relations, conflict, and conflict prevention.
2,768 citations
"Tweetment Effects on the Tweeted: E..." refers background in this paper
...important set of group norms, and prejudice towards out-groups can be a strong signal of in-group membership (Brewer 1999)....
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...Attitudes towards out-groups are a particularly important set of group norms, and prejudice towards out-groups can be a strong signal of in-group membership (Brewer 1999)....
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