quoras: A Python API for Quora Data Collection to Increase Multi-Language Social Science Research

Das, Dipto; Semaan, Bryan

doi:10.1145/3406865.3418333

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…BnQuora offers an intriguing place to explore how sociotechnical systems may reproduce colonial structures that shape people's identity performances. Studies have shown how online platforms such as Quora can host a large volume of discussions on regional issues when they are operated in local languages [19,111]. From this point of view, the launch of Quora in Bengali seems to be a benevolent attempt on the part of the platform designers for creating a more accessible space for the Bengali speaking users.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It has been speculated that the platform has an anonymous body of human and machine moderators that govern the site 4 . Quora offers itself in more than twenty languages that creates greater accessibility for its potential users, and opportunity for more contextualized discussions on regional issues [19].…”

Section: Governance As Surveillance: Towards Platform Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To collect data that could help us understand the ways in which systems of governance mediate people's identity work and identity expression across national and religious identities in the context of the Global South-a region that was shaped by colonialism-our data collection process combined purposive sampling [109] and snowball sampling [47]. We used the quoras API [19] to collect data from BnQuora from 15 May 2020 to 15 July 2020.…”

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Table 1 lists the keywords and phrases we used to generate our purposive dataset. Though the quoras API [19] supports keyword/phrase searching directly, it discourages the use of this function. To abide by the advisory robots.txt file of the BnQuora platform, we searched for the Q&A threads on the BnQuora platform containing our list of keywords or phrases directly using a web-browser.…”

Section: Data Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, this study is a part of a multi-sited study on the process of identity decolonization work on online platforms. Moreover, the data was collected from the site using the first author's user credentials through the quoras API [19]. Therefore, the search results that were included in the dataset might reflect the first author's user history on the platform at that time.…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

"Jol" or "Pani"?: How Does Governance Shape a Platform's Identity?

Das

Østerlund

Semaan

2021

Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact.

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In this paper, we explore how sociotechnical systems support and impede the identity performances and identity expression of communities that have experienced a long history of colonialism, where colonization is the practice through which a foreign power reshapes the social structures and systems of other societies. We conducted a trace ethnography among members of a specific digital platform-Bengali Quora (BnQuora). BnQuora is part of the question and answer (Q&A) platform Quora, where people with this particular ethnolinguistic identity come together to engage in conversations about their identities; identities which were shaped through a long history of colonization in the Global South. In drawing on a conceptual framework that brings together identity performativity, governance, content moderation, and surveillance, we find that the sociotechnical mechanisms of governance that mediate people's performances on the BnQuora platform give rise to a kind of platform identity-certain identities are privileged while others are pushed to the margins based on linguistic practices, nationalities, and religious affiliations. We illustrate this through the themes of moderators as prison guards, collective surveillance as enforcing a majority identity, algorithmic coloniality, and staging as self-imprisonment. Finally, we discuss the ways in which governance shapes a platform's identity and can create, strengthen, and reinforce coloniality.CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Governance As Surveillance: Towards Platform Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%