Related papers: What Makes Online Communities 'Better'? Measuring …
Many researchers studying online communities seek to make them better. However, beyond a small set of widely-held values, such as combating misinformation and abuse, determining what 'better' means can be challenging, as community members…
Millions of online communities are governed by volunteer moderators, who shape their communities by setting and enforcing rules, recruiting additional moderators, and participating in the community themselves. These moderators must…
A major task for moderators of online spaces is norm-setting, essentially creating shared norms for user behavior in their communities. Platform design principles emphasize the importance of highlighting norm-adhering examples and…
Rules are a critical component of the functioning of nearly every online community, yet it is challenging for community moderators to make data-driven decisions about what rules to set for their communities. The connection between a…
Studying human values is instrumental for cross-cultural research, enabling a better understanding of preferences and behaviour of society at large and communities therein. To study the dynamics of communities online, we propose a method to…
Community rules play a key part in enabling or constraining the behaviors of members in online communities. However, little is unknown regarding whether and to what degree changing rules actually affects community dynamics. In this paper,…
Online communities develop unique characteristics, establish social norms, and exhibit distinct dynamics among their members. Activity in online communities often results in concrete ``off-line'' actions with a broad societal impact (e.g.,…
Online platforms like Reddit, Wikipedia, and Facebook are integral to modern life, enabling content creation and sharing through posts, comments, and discussions. Despite their virtual and often anonymous nature, these platforms need rules…
Developing a strong community requires empowered leadership capable of overcoming governance challenges. New online platforms have given users opportunities to practice governance through content moderation roles. The over 2.8 million…
This study introduces ValueScope, a framework leveraging language models to quantify social norms and values within online communities, grounded in social science perspectives on normative structures. We employ ValueScope to dissect and…
Understanding the sociodemographic composition of online platforms is essential for accurately interpreting digital behavior and its societal implications. Yet, current methods often lack the transparency and reliability required, risking…
Increasingly people form opinions based on information they consume on online social media. As a result, it is crucial to understand what type of content attracts people's attention on social media and drive discussions. In this paper we…
Millions of people use online social networks to reinforce their sense of belonging, for example by giving and asking for feedback as a form of social validation and self-recognition. It is common to observe disagreement among people…
Many benefits of online communities---such as obtaining new information, opportunities, and social connections---increase with size. Thus, a ``successful'' online community often evokes an image of hundreds of thousands of users, and…
How are Reddit communities responding to AI-generated content? We explored this question through a large-scale analysis of subreddit community rules and their change over time. We collected the metadata and community rules for over…
Humans need a sense of community (SOC), and social media platforms afford opportunities to address this need by providing users with a sense of virtual community (SOVC). This paper explores SOVC on Reddit and is motivated by two goals: (1)…
Social media are shifting towards pluralism -- community-governed platforms where groups define their own norms. What violates rules in one community may be perfectly acceptable in another. Can AI models help moderate such pluralistic…
With increasing attention to online anti-social behaviors such as personal attacks and bigotry, it is critical to have an accurate accounting of how widespread anti-social behaviors are. In this paper, we empirically measure the prevalence…
We analyze gendered communities defined in three different ways: text, users, and sentiment. Differences across these representations reveal facets of communities' distinctive identities, such as social group, topic, and attitudes. Two…
Sense of Community (SOC) is vital to individual and collective well-being. Although social interactions have moved increasingly online, still little is known about the specific relationships between the nature of these interactions and…