Gendering algorithms in social media

2021 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-31
Author(s):  
Eduard Fosch-Villaronga ◽  
Adam Poulsen ◽  
Roger A. Søraa ◽  
Bart Custers

Social media platforms employ inferential analytics methods to guess user preferences and may include sensitive attributes such as race, gender, sexual orientation, and political opinions. These methods are often opaque, but they can have significant effects such as predicting behaviors for marketing purposes, influencing behavior for profit, serving attention economics, and reinforcing existing biases such as gender stereotyping. Although two international human rights treaties include express obligations relating to harmful and wrongful stereotyping, these stereotypes persist both online and offline, and platforms often appear to fail to understand that gender is not merely a binary of being a 'man' or a 'woman,' but is socially constructed. Our study investigates the impact of algorithmic bias on inadvertent privacy violations and the reinforcement of social prejudices of gender and sexuality through a multidisciplinary perspective including legal, computer science, and queer media viewpoints. We conducted an online survey to understand whether and how Twitter inferred the gender of users. Beyond Twitter's binary understanding of gender and the inevitability of the gender inference as part of Twitter's personalization trade-off, the results show that Twitter misgendered users in nearly 20% of the cases (N=109). Although not apparently correlated, only 8% of the straight male respondents were misgendered, compared to 25% of gay men and 16% of straight women. Our contribution shows how the lack of attention to gender in gender classifiers exacerbates existing biases and affects marginalized communities. With our paper, we hope to promote the online account for privacy, diversity, and inclusion and advocate for the freedom of identity that everyone should have online and offline.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Evelina Francisco ◽  
Nadira Fardos ◽  
Aakash Bhatt ◽  
Gulhan Bizel

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting stay-at-home orders have disrupted all aspects of life globally, most notably our relationship with the internet and social media platforms. People are online more than ever before, working and attending school from home and socializing with friends and family via video conferencing. Marketers and brands have been forced to adapt to a new normal and, as a result, have shifted their brand communication and marketing mix to digital approaches. Hence, this study aims to examine the shift of influencer marketing on Instagram during this period and the possible future implications. By employing an online survey for exploratory research, individuals answered questions addressing their perceptions about the impact of the pandemic, brands and influencers’ relationship, and the overall changes made in marketing strategy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilaria Cataldo ◽  
Bruno Lepri ◽  
Michelle Jin Yee Neoh ◽  
Gianluca Esposito

Social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, are now part of almost everyone's social life, especially for the newer generations. Children and teenagers grew up together with these Internet-based services, which have become an integral part of their personal and social life. However, as reported in various studies, psychological and psychiatric problems are sometimes associated with problematic usage of social media. The primary purpose of this review is to provide an overview of the cognitive, psychological, and social outcomes correlated with a problematic use of social media sites during the developmental stages, from age 10 to 19 years. With a specific focus on depression, anxiety, eating, and neurodevelopmental disorders, the review also discusses evidence related to genetic and neurobiological issues, together with the implications in clinical work and future directions under a multidisciplinary perspective. While the scientific community has made significant progress in enhancing our understanding of the impact of social media on teenagers' lives, more research integrating biological and environmental factors is required to fully elucidate the development of these disorders.


2021 ◽  
pp. 073953292199247
Author(s):  
Yanfang Wu ◽  
Bruce Garrison

This research explores the impact of ownership on innovations in U.S. newspaper newsrooms by constructing a structural equation model (SEM). The study, using an online survey (N = 1,063), found that social media triggers a paradigm shift—newspapers owned by publicly held, for-profit companies excel in social media innovations and create more social media friendly innovations milieus than newspapers owned by privately held, for-profit companies. Journalists from the publicly held newspapers engage with audiences more on social media than privately held newspapers. The more journalists engage on Twitter, the more they tend to have a negative attitude toward social media. However, the more journalists at publicly held newspapers engage on Facebook, the more they tend to hold a positive attitude toward social media, opposite of journalists at privately held newspapers.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
pp. 7962
Author(s):  
Inwon Kang ◽  
Yiya Zhang ◽  
Sungjoon Yoo

Social media platforms insist on the so-called “number of visits, clicking, and subscription” as a measurement of social media performance. However, this method of measurement does not take into account dormant user accounts and unintentional clicks or visits. To fully understand social media performance, this study aims to examine the process of users’ discontinuance behavior from the view of technostress creators and socialstress creators through social media fatigue. Also, this study investigates the influence of involvement between social media fatigue and discontinuance behaviors. To understand the impact of technostress and social stress creators on users’ discontinuance behavior, this study conducted an off- and online survey in Korea. Using Confirmatory factory analysis (CFA), this study has a strong academic contribution because it identifies the existing methods measuring social media performance through numbers of accounts or joining in as inaccurate.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 1602-1608
Author(s):  
Rafidah Abd Razak Et.al

Purpose: The intention of this research is to develop understanding of e-cigarette awareness towards students in university. Method: The data collection method used in this study is online survey using Google form applications via social media platforms. The respondents consist of 304 students from Malaysian public university located in north Malaysia. This survey consists of 14 questions including the demographic question. Result: Most of the respondents (n = 304) were aware of the impact of e-cigarettes and 124 (40.79 percent) had used an e-cigarette previously. E-cigarette awareness is also high among female students compared to male students.Conclusion: Importantly, attention needs to be paid to the use of e-cigarettes. Besides that, government law enforcement needs to be restructured to monitor the e-cigarette product from direct to adult access. Institutions also need to play a role in exposing students to awareness of e-cigarettes by increasing awareness programs. Overall, this study suggests a further research on this area to be conducted in a large scope of population in Malaysia and demographic locations.


2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110118
Author(s):  
Dominik Neumann ◽  
Patricia T Huddleston ◽  
Bridget K Behe

Marketing on social media has become ubiquitous. Consequently, social media platforms are increasing the level of advertising content that users may later encounter when navigating online shopping websites. It is unclear how this amplification of exposure to marketing messages through social media affects consumers’ attitudes to products online. Furthermore, the roles of social media participation and proneness to experience Fear of Missing Out on product attitude remain largely unexplored. In this research ( N = 1002), we employed an online survey of US Instagram users. These data were submitted to three-way moderation regression analyses with attitude toward the product as the dependent variable. Consumers who are more active on social media and had high (vs low) Fear of Missing Out expressed more favorable attitudes toward online products after being exposed to Instagram content (vs not exposed). The theoretical and practical implications for cognitive processing research and advertising strategy and study limitations are discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Abouzid ◽  
◽  
Dina M. El-Sherif ◽  
Nael Kamel Eltewacy ◽  
Nesrine Ben Hadj Dahman ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has affected health and lifestyle behaviors of people globally. This project aims to identify the impact of COVID-19 on lifestyle behavior of individuals in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region during confinement. Methods We conducted an online survey in 17 countries (Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Yemen, Syria, Palestine, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, Iraq, and Sudan) from the MENA region on August and September 2020. The questionnaire included self-reported information on lifestyle behaviors, including physical activity, eating habits, smoking, watching television, social media use and sleep before and during the pandemic. Logistic regression was performed to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on lifestyle behaviors. Results A total of 5896 participants were included in the final analysis and 62.8% were females. The BMI of the participants was 25.4 ± 5.8 kg/m2. Around 38.4% of the participants stopped practicing any physical activities during the confinement (P < 0.001), and 57.1% reported spending more than 2 h on social media (P < 0.001). There were no significant changes in smoking habits. Also, 30.9% reported an improvement in their eating habits compared with 24.8% reported worsening of their eating habits. Fast-food consumption decreased significantly in 48.8% of the study population. This direct/indirect exposure to COVID-19 was associated with an increased consumption of carbohydrates (OR = 1.09; 95% CI = 1.02–1.17; P = 0.01), egg (OR = 1.08; 95% CI = 1.02–1.16; P = 0.01), sugar (OR = 1.09; 95% CI = 1.02–1.16; P = 0.02), meat, and poultry (OR = 1.13; 95% CI = 1.06–1.20; P < 0.01). There was also associated increase in hours spent on watching television (OR = 1.07; 95% CI = 1.02–1.12; P < 0.01) and social media (OR = 1.09; 95% CI = 1.01–1.18; P = 0.03). However, our results showed a reduction in sleeping hours among those exposed to COVID-19 infection (OR = 0.85; 95% CI = 0.77–0.94; P < 0.01). Conclusions The COVID-19 pandemic was associated with an increase in food consumption and sedentary life. Being exposed to COVID-19 by direct infection or through an infected household is a significant predictor of amplifying these changes. Public health interventions are needed to address healthy lifestyle behaviors during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S714-S715
Author(s):  
Jean-Etienne Poirrier ◽  
Theodore Caputi ◽  
John Ayers ◽  
Mark Dredze ◽  
Sara Poston ◽  
...  

Abstract Background A small number of powerful users (“influencers”) dominates conversations on social media platforms: less than 1% of Twitter accounts have at least 3,000 followers and even fewer have hundreds of thousands or millions of followers. Beyond simple metrics (number of tweets, retweets...) little is known about these “influencers”, particularly in relation to their role in shaping online narratives about vaccines. Our goal was to describe influential Twitter accounts that are driving conversations about vaccines and present new metrics of influence. Methods Using publicly-available data from Twitter, we selected posts from 1-Jan-2016 to 31-Dec-2018 and extracted the top 5% of accounts tweeting about vaccines with the most followers. Using automated classifiers, we determined the location of these accounts, and grouped them into those that primarily tweet pro- versus anti-vaccine content. We further characterized the demographics of these influencer accounts. Results From 25,381 vaccine-related tweets available in our sample representing 10,607 users, 530 accounts represented the top 5% by number of followers. These accounts had on average 1,608,637 followers (standard deviation=5,063,421) and 340,390 median followers. Among the accounts for which sentiment was successfully estimated by the classifier, 10.4% (n=55) posted anti-vaccine content and 33.6% (n=178) posted pro-vaccine content. Of the 55 anti-vaccine accounts, 50% (n=18) of the accounts for which location was successfully determined were from the United States. Of the 178 pro-vaccine accounts, 42.5% (n=54) were from the United States. Conclusion This study showed that only a small proportion of Twitter accounts (A) post about vaccines and (B) have a high follower count and post anti-vaccine content. Further analysis of these users may help researchers and policy makers better understand how to amplify the impact of pro-vaccine social media messages. Disclosures Jean-Etienne Poirrier, PhD, MBA, The GSK group of companies (Employee, Shareholder) Theodore Caputi, PhD, Good Analytics Inc. (Consultant) John Ayers, PhD, GSK (Grant/Research Support) Mark Dredze, PhD, Bloomberg LP (Consultant)Good Analytics (Consultant) Sara Poston, PharmD, The GlaxoSmithKline group of companies (Employee, Shareholder) Cosmina Hogea, PhD, GlaxoSmithKline (Employee, Shareholder)


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivia Hughes ◽  
Rachael Hunter

BACKGROUND Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin condition, which can be affected by stress. Living with psoriasis can trigger negative emotions, which may influence quality of life. OBJECTIVE This study explored the experiences of people with psoriasis with attention to the potential role of anger in the onset and progression of the chronic skin condition. METHODS Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with twelve participants (n=5 females, n=7 males) recruited online from an advert on a patient charity’s social media platforms. Data were transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis. RESULTS Four key themes were identified: (1) ‘I get really angry with the whole situation:’ anger at the self and others, (2) the impact of anger on psoriasis: angry skin, (3) shared experiences of distress, and (4) moving past anger to affirmation. CONCLUSIONS Findings suggest that anger can have a perceived impact on psoriasis through contributing to sensory symptoms and unhelpful coping cycles and point to a need for enhanced treatment with more psychological support. The findings also highlight the continued stigma which exists for people living with skin conditions and how this may contribute to, and sustain, anger for those individuals. Future research could usefully focus on developing targeted psychosocial interventions to promote healthy emotional coping with psoriasis.


Author(s):  
R. Tamara Konetzka ◽  
Hari Sharma ◽  
Jeongyoung Park

An ongoing concern about medical malpractice litigation is that it may induce provider exit, potentially affecting consumer welfare. The nursing home sector is subject to substantial litigation activity but remains generally understudied in terms of the effects of litigation, due perhaps to a paucity of readily available data. In this article, we estimate the association between litigation and nursing home exit (closure or change in ownership), separating the impact of malpractice environment from direct litigation. We use 2 main data sources for this study: Westlaw’s Adverse Filings database (1997-2005) and Online Survey, Certification and Reporting data sets (1997-2005). We use probit models with state and year fixed effects to examine the relationship between litigation and the probability of nursing home closure or change in ownership with and without adjustment for malpractice environment. We examine the relationship on average and also stratify by profit status, chain membership, and market competition. We find that direct litigation against a nursing home has a nonsignificant effect on the probability of closure or change in ownership within the subsequent 2 years. In contrast, the broader malpractice environment has a significant effect on change in ownership, even for nursing homes that have not been sued, but not on closure. Effects are stronger among for-profit and chain facilities and those in more competitive markets. A high-risk malpractice environment is associated with change of ownership of nursing homes regardless of whether they have been directly sued, indicating that it is too blunt an instrument for weeding out low-quality nursing homes.


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