Supporting Prosocial Behaviour in Online Communities through Social Media Affordances

Abstract

Affordances are action possibilities that emerge from the relationship between the properties of an object and an interacting agent's capabilities. This poster examines how one type of affordance—anonymity—is enabled or constrained by six features of social media platforms. Our work is one step in a broader agenda to: (1) identify affordances that influence users' behaviour in online communities; (2) outline the social media features that enable or constrain those affordances; and, (3) experimentally determine whether certain affordances, or combinations of affordances, support prosocial behaviour. Prosocial behaviour in information and communication technologies (ICTs) is broadly viewed here as benefiting other individuals in online communities, which in turn could increase the subjective well‐being (SWB) of the community's members. SWB is characterized by high positive affect, low negative affect, and high life satisfaction.

Engagement for Good or Ill: Comparing Characteristics of Co‐Creative and Co‐Destructive Online Communities

“…This study examines the features of one positively‐valenced and one negatively‐valenced subreddit community in order to determine the engagement factors that drive participation in each and whether these factors influence the community’s engagement valence. Recognizing that the affordances of social networking sites play a role in incentivizing and disincentivizing different types of user behaviours (Kelly et al, 2022), we hope that insights gained from this study could be used to design online spaces which promote more positive user engagement.…”

Envisioning Ethical Mass Influence Systems

“…Psychology has established methods for measuring subjective well‐being (Layard, 2010). Using a variety of mechanisms, such as the design affordances of the user‐interfaces (Kelly et al, 2022) and findings in NLP, it seems in principle possible for an ethical algorithmic MIS to nudge its users in a more prosocial direction (Thaler et al, 2014), and thus towards greater subjective well‐being, or greater human flourishing. However, there could be conflicts between different peaks on the Moral Landscape, and there can even be trade‐offs between virtues for people occupying a single peak.…”

How green social network affordances enhance pro‐environmental behaviour?

“…Affordances, in general, are interpreted as action possibilities offered by a system (Leidner et al, 2018; Treem & Leonardi, 2013). Specifically, social network affordances are found to enhance several prosocial and collective behaviours (Ahuja et al, 2018; Kelly et al, 2022; Leidner et al, 2018; Sun et al, 2019). Though PEB is also a form of prosocial behaviour, the investigation of the GSN's effectiveness on PEB using the affordance lens is relatively sparse (Han et al, 2018; Lange & Dewitte, 2019).…”