A Tempest in a Teacup? Analyzing Firestorms on Twitter

Lamba, Hemank; Malik, Momin M.

doi:10.1145/2808797.2808828

Cited by 27 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Another line of work has focused on detecting antisocial behavior by analyzing the relationship between the instigators and their targets, including their linguistic similarities [35,55], their shared social context [41], their personalities [20], and the misalignment between their intentions and perceptions [11]. Other studies have explored antisocial behavior at the community level, including inter-community conflict [33], the maintenance of toxic community norms [42], and the effects of major negative events [34]. In contrast to these studies, in this paper, we focus on the conversational and social context in which toxic behavior occurs.…”

Section: Further Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Structure of Toxic Conversations on Twitter

Saveski

Roy

2021

Proceedings of the Web Conference 2021

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Social media platforms promise to enable rich and vibrant conversations online; however, their potential is often hindered by antisocial behaviors. In this paper, we study the relationship between structure and toxicity in conversations on Twitter. We collect 1.18M conversations (58.5M tweets, 4.4M users) prompted by tweets that are posted by or mention major news outlets over one year and candidates who ran in the 2018 US midterm elections over four months. We analyze the conversations at the individual, dyad, and group level. At the individual level, we find that toxicity is spread across many low to moderately toxic users. At the dyad level, we observe that toxic replies are more likely to come from users who do not have any social connection nor share many common friends with the poster. At the group level, we find that toxic conversations tend to have larger, wider, and deeper reply trees, but sparser follow graphs. To test the predictive power of the conversational structure, we consider two prediction tasks. In the first prediction task, we demonstrate that the structural features can be used to predict whether the conversation will become toxic as early as the first ten replies. In the second prediction task, we show that the structural characteristics of the conversation are also predictive of whether the next reply posted by a specific user will be toxic or not. We observe that the structural and linguistic characteristics of the conversations are complementary in both prediction tasks. Our findings inform the design of healthier social media platforms and demonstrate that models based on the structural characteristics of conversations can be used to detect early signs of toxicity and potentially steer conversations in a less toxic direction.

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Section: Further Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Structure of Toxic Conversations on Twitter

Saveski

Roy

2021

Proceedings of the Web Conference 2021

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“…That is, moral outrage in the digital age is common and often especially intense [1]. Moreover, the prevalence of such outrage is particularly concerning given research showing that outrage occurring on social media is often quickly realized but imprecisely pointed at diverse potential targets [1,7].…”

Section: Moral Discourse and Social Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Value-based discussions are prone to conflict, as individuals engaged in such conversations are often passionately invested in their beliefs and positions [2][3][4][5]. A body of research has noted that, particularly in the context of social media environments and electronic communication methods, public discussion of controversial topics has become even more volatile over recent years [6][7][8][9]. A number of reasons for such conflicts have been suggested in recent literatures, many of which have shown a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 great promise in describing or predicting caustic forms of dialogue.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moral Grandstanding in Public Discourse: Status-seeking Motives as a Potential Explanatory Mechanism in Predicting Conflict

Grubbs¹,

Warmke²,

Tosi³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Public discourse is often caustic and conflict-filled. This trend seems to be particularly evident when the content of such discourse is around moral issues (broadly defined) and when the discourse occurs on social media. Several explanatory mechanisms for such conflict have been explored in recent psychological and social-science literatures. The present work sought to examine a potentially novel explanatory mechanism defined in philosophical literature: Moral Grandstanding. According to philosophical accounts, Moral Grandstanding is the use of moral talk to seek social status. For the present work, we conducted six studies, using two undergraduate samples (Study 1, N = 361; Study 2, N = 356); a sample matched to U.S. norms for age, gender, race, income, Census region (Study 3, N = 1,063); a YouGov sample matched to U.S. demographic norms (Study 4, N = 2,000); and a brief, one-month longitudinal study of Mechanical Turk workers in the U.S. (Study 5, Baseline N = 499, followup n = 296), and a large, one-week YouGov sample matched to U.S. demographic norms (Baseline N = 2,519, follow-up n = 1,776). Across studies, we found initial support for the validity of Moral Grandstanding as a construct. Specifically, moral grandstanding motivation was associated with status-seeking personality traits, as well as greater political and moral conflict in daily life.

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“…In fact, the piling on behavior observed in firestorms is a fundamental component of moral grandstanding—wanting to be perceived as moral by others [21]. Although firestorms may not promote long-standing change in public discourse [22], they can result in significant short-term consequences. This can be observed, for example, in the case of Justine Sacco, a communications executive who was publicly terminated after a firestorm erupted in response to a tweet she sent in 2014 [23].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Media Outrage in Response to a School-Based Substance Use Survey: Qualitative Analysis

Gassman¹,

Dutta²,

Agley³

et al. 2019

J Med Internet Res

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Background School-based alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use (ATOD) surveys are a common epidemiological means of understanding youth risk behaviors. They can be used to monitor national trends and provide data, in aggregate, to schools, communities, and states for the purposes of funding allocation, prevention programming, and other supportive infrastructure. However, such surveys sometimes are targeted by public criticism, and even legal action, often in response to a lack of perceived appropriateness. The ubiquity of social media has added the risk of potential online firestorms, or digital outrage events, to the hazards to be considered when administering such a survey. Little research has investigated the influence of online firestorms on public health survey administration, and no research has analyzed the content of such an occurrence. Analyzing this content will facilitate insights as to how practitioners can minimize the risk of generating outrage when conducting such surveys. Objective This study aimed to identify common themes within social media comments comprising an online firestorm that erupted in response to a school-based ATOD survey in order to inform risk-reduction strategies. Methods Data were collected by archiving all public comments made in response to a news study about a school-based ATOD survey that was featured on a common social networking platform. Using the general inductive approach and elements of thematic analysis, two researchers followed a multi-step protocol to clean, categorize, and consolidate data, generating codes for all 207 responses. Results In total, 133 comments were coded as oppositional to the survey and 74 were coded as supportive. Among the former, comments tended to reflect government-related concerns, conspiratorial or irrational thinking, issues of parental autonomy and privacy, fear of child protective services or police, issues with survey mechanisms, and reasoned disagreement. Among the latter, responses showed that posters perceived the ability to prevent abuse and neglect and support holistic health, surmised that opponents were hiding something, expressed reasoned support, or made factual statements about the survey. Consistent with research on moral outrage and digital firestorms, few comments (<10%) contained factual information about the survey; nearly half of the comments, both supportive and oppositional, were coded in categories that presupposed misinformation. Conclusions The components of even a small online firestorm targeting a school-based ATOD survey are nuanced and complex. It is likely impossible to be fully insulated against the risk of outrage in response to this type of public health work; however, careful articulation of procedures, anticipating specific concerns, and two-way community-based interaction may reduce risk.

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A Tempest in a Teacup? Analyzing Firestorms on Twitter

Cited by 27 publications

References 26 publications

The Structure of Toxic Conversations on Twitter

The Structure of Toxic Conversations on Twitter

Moral Grandstanding in Public Discourse: Status-seeking Motives as a Potential Explanatory Mechanism in Predicting Conflict

Social Media Outrage in Response to a School-Based Substance Use Survey: Qualitative Analysis

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