Online/Offline discrepancies in moral judgement among social media users: A mixed methods study

Abstract

<p><strong>Anti-social behaviour online remains a pervasive and persistent thorn in the side of social media platforms. Understanding what drives bad behaviour online is an important step towards responding to the issue, and calls for an interdisciplinary understanding of a range of complex and interrelated factors. Discrepancies in moral judgement between online and offline contexts is an example of one such factor which is well supported within the theoretical literature but remains relatively underexplored from an empirical perspective. This thesis addresses this gap in the literature using a mixed-methods, vignette-based approach spread across three studies. Overall, the findings of these three studies revealed that while some online/offline discrepancies in moral judgement do exist, these discrepancies tend to be highly context-specific, and generally limited in frequency and extent. A contrast between the quantitative and qualitative findings also highlighted some tension between empirical insight and theoretical/self-reported perspectives on this topic.</strong></p>