The Distorting Prism of Social Media: How Self-Selection and Exposure to Incivility Fuel Online Comment Toxicity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin Woo Kim ◽  
Andrew Guess ◽  
Brendan Nyhan ◽  
Jason Reifler

Abstract Though prior studies have analyzed the textual characteristics of online comments about politics, less is known about how selection into commenting behavior and exposure to other people’s comments changes the tone and content of political discourse. This article makes three contributions. First, we show that frequent commenters on Facebook are more likely to be interested in politics, to have more polarized opinions, and to use toxic language in comments in an elicitation task. Second, we find that people who comment on articles in the real world use more toxic language on average than the public as a whole; levels of toxicity in comments scraped from media outlet Facebook pages greatly exceed what is observed in comments we elicit on the same articles from a nationally representative sample. Finally, we demonstrate experimentally that exposure to toxic language in comments increases the toxicity of subsequent comments.

1994 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Sancho-Aldridge ◽  
Barrie Gunter

A survey was conducted among a nationally representative sample of over 2,800 UK television viewers to examine audience reactions towards a drama series about psychiatry. Whilst the majority of respondents agreed that the drama Shrinks was good entertainment and gave a realistic view of the field of psychiatry, those who reportedly had a close association with a mentally ill person were less likely to find the characterisations of the patients and psychiatrists credible. Despite the misgivings of practising psychiatrists and clinical psychologists, however, no evidence was found to support the idea that watching the drama resulted in misconceptions about the real world of psychiatric medicine.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Anwar Hafidzi

This research begins with an understanding of the endemic radicalism of society, not only of the real world, but also of various online social media. This study showed that the avoidance of online radicalism can be stopped as soon as possible by accusing those influenced by the radical radicality of a secular religious approach. The methods used must be assisted in order to achieve balanced understanding (wasathiyah) under the different environmental conditions of the culture through recognizing the meaning of religion. The research tool used is primarily library work and the journal writings by Abu Rokhmad, a terrorist and radicalise specialist. The results of this study are that an approach that supports inclusive ism will avoid the awareness of radicalization through a heart-to-heart approach. This study also shows that radical actors will never cease to argue dramatically until they are able to grasp different views from Islamic law, culture, and families.Keywords: radicalism, deradicalization, multiculturalism, culture, religion, moderate.Penelitian ini berawal dari paham radikalisme yang telah mewabah di masyarakat, bukan hanya di dunia nyata, bahkan sudah menyusup di berbagai media sosial online. Penelitian ini menemukan bahwa cara menangkal radikalisme online dapat dilakukan pencegahan sedini mungkin melalui pendekatan konseling religius multikultural terhadap mereka yang terkena paham radikal radikal. Diantara teknik yang digunakan adalah melalui pemahaman tentang konsep agama juga perlu digalakkan agar memunculkan pemahaman yang moderat (wasathiyah) diberbagai keadaan lingkungan masyarakat. Metode yang digunakan untuk penelitian ini adalah library research dengan sumber utama adalah karya dan jurnal karya Abu Rokhmad seorang pakar dalam masalah terorisme dan radikalisme. Temuan penelitian ini adalah paham radikalisasi itu dapat dihentikan dengan pendekatan hati ke hati dengan mengedepankan budaya yang multikultural. Kajian ini juga membuktikan bahwa pelaku paham radikal tidak akan pernah berhenti memberikan argumen radikal kecuali mampu memahami perbedaan pendapat yang bersumber dari syariat Islam, lingkungan sosial, dan keluarga.Kata kunci: radikalisme, deradikalisasi, multikultural, budaya, agama, moderat.


Epidemiologia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-94
Author(s):  
Mst. Marium Begum ◽  
Osman Ulvi ◽  
Ajlina Karamehic-Muratovic ◽  
Mallory R. Walsh ◽  
Hasan Tarek ◽  
...  

Background: Chikungunya is a vector-borne disease, mostly present in tropical and subtropical regions. The virus is spread by Ae. aegypti and Ae. albopictus mosquitos and symptoms include high fever to severe joint pain. Dhaka, Bangladesh, suffered an outbreak of chikungunya in 2017 lasting from April to September. With the goal of reducing cases, social media was at the forefront during this outbreak and educated the public about symptoms, prevention, and control of the virus. Popular web-based sources such as the top dailies in Bangladesh, local news outlets, and Facebook spread awareness of the outbreak. Objective: This study sought to investigate the role of social and mainstream media during the chikungunya epidemic. The study objective was to determine if social media can improve awareness of and practice associated with reducing cases of chikungunya. Methods: We collected chikungunya-related information circulated from the top nine television channels in Dhaka, Bangladesh, airing from 1st April–20th August 2017. All the news published in the top six dailies in Bangladesh were also compiled. The 50 most viewed chikungunya-related Bengali videos were manually coded and analyzed. Other social media outlets, such as Facebook, were also analyzed to determine the number of chikungunya-related posts and responses to these posts. Results: Our study showed that media outlets were associated with reducing cases of chikungunya, indicating that media has the potential to impact future outbreaks of these alpha viruses. Each media outlet (e.g., web, television) had an impact on the human response to an individual’s healthcare during this outbreak. Conclusions: To prevent future outbreaks of chikungunya, media outlets and social media can be used to educate the public regarding prevention strategies such as encouraging safe travel, removing stagnant water sources, and assisting with tracking cases globally to determine where future outbreaks may occur.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Joel M. Topf ◽  
Paul N. Williams

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in an avalanche of information, much of it false or misleading. Social media posts with misleading or dangerous opinions and analyses are often amplified by celebrities and social media influencers; these posts have contributed substantially to this avalanche of information. An emerging force in this information infodemic is public physicians, doctors who view a public presence as a large segment of their mission. These physicians bring authority and real-world experience to the COVID-19 discussion. To investigate the role of public physicians, we interviewed a convenience cohort of physicians who have played a role in the infodemic. We asked the physicians about how their roles have changed, how their audience has changed, what role politics plays, and how they address misinformation. The physicians noted increased audience size with an increased focus on the pandemic. Most avoided confronting politics, but others found it unavoidable or that even if they tried to avoide it, it would be brought up by their audience. The physicians felt that confronting and correcting misinformation was a core part of their mission. Public physicians on social media are a new occurrence and are an important part of fighting online misinformation.


We the Gamers ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 65-80
Author(s):  
Karen Schrier

Chapter 5 describes how games can support real-world action and change. How can knowledge be applied to the public sphere and serve communities? Why and how should games be used to enable ethics- and civics-in-action? What are the best practices and strategies for supporting connections among civics, ethics, and the real world using games? The chapter includes an overview of why it is necessary to engage in real-world action. It describes the benefits of applying learning to real-world contexts and processes, and why games may support this. It also includes the limitations of using games to apply knowledge, and how to minimize those limitations. Finally, it reviews strategies that teachers can take to use games to take action and make change. It opens with the example EteRNA, and also shares five examples-in-action: Reliving the Revolution, 1979 Revolution: Black Friday, Community PlanIt, Bay Area Regional Planner, and Thunderbird Strike.


2020 ◽  
pp. 158-174
Author(s):  
Ikbal Maulana

Due to its large number public cannot gather in one place and speak as a single voice, and consequently it cannot represent itself. However, public is always needed as political legitimation, therefore political forces compete to make their own definitions of public and use them as the basis of political claims. To make their definition of public close to the real people, democratic mechanisms have been developed. Once in a number of years, people elect candidates who will represent and govern them. But, most of the time they will be silent and ignored by the changing dynamics of politics. Conventional media does not help the public much to express its voice. Most often it becomes the tool of the elite for indoctrination or the mobilizing of bias. However, social media might empower people, because it allows them to voice their own concerns and to have conversation with each other. But, to have a real impact, the conversation must be directed to solve a real problem. Leadership is required to mobilize people's voice virtually and then turn it into a real political pressure.


JAMIA Open ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 416-422
Author(s):  
Laura McDonald ◽  
Varun Behl ◽  
Vijayarakhavan Sundar ◽  
Faisal Mehmud ◽  
Bill Malcolm ◽  
...  

Abstract There is a need to understand how patients are managed in the real world to better understand disease burden and unmet need. Traditional approaches to gather these data include the use of electronic medical record (EMR) or claims databases; however, in many cases data access policies prevent rapid insight gathering. Social media may provide a potential source of real-world data to assess treatment patterns, but the limitations and biases of doing so have not yet been evaluated. Here, we assessed whether patient treatment patterns extracted from publicly available patient forums compare to results from more traditional EMR and claims databases. We observed that the 95% confidence intervals of proportions of treatments received at first, second, and third line for advanced/metastatic melanoma generated from unstructured social media data overlapped with 95% confidence intervals from proportions obtained from 1 or more traditional EMR/Claims databases. Social media may offer a valid data option to understand treatment patterns in the real world.


2018 ◽  
Vol 79 (5) ◽  
pp. 264
Author(s):  
Wendi Kaspar

As usually occurs, there is quite a variety of topics in the May issue of College & Research Libraries. However, there is interesting thread running through about half of the articles in the issue, speaking to the treatment of media, images, and music. Working on a college campus, it is impossible not to see how embedded media has become in people’s lives, as both consumers and producers. Creating and sharing videos through social media, posting to YouTube channels, and circulation of memes has become an everyday reality. It is a reality that even pervades spoken language in the real world with comments like “You’ve become a meme.”


2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 80-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stanisław Juszczyk

Abstract Using social media Web sites is among the most common activities of today’s children and adolescents. Such sites offer today’s youth a portal for entertainment and communication, and have grown exponentially in recent years. Parents and teachers become aware of the nature of social media sites, thus they do not know that not all of them are healthy environments for children and adolescents. This field is important because pedagogists, psychologists and pediatrics need to understand how youth lives in a new, massive, and complex virtual universe, even as they carry on their lives in the real world. In the article I have presented a discussion of a few empirical research carried out by different authors to show various aspects of child and adolescent development in this virtual universe and to present the methodological implications of such types of studies.


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