A Democracy Called Facebook? Participation as a Privacy Strategy on Social Media

Engelmann, Severin; Großklags, Jens; Papakyriakopoulos, Orestis

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-02547-2_6

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Although we controlled for multiple factors and based our modeling decisions on prior scientific work, additional experiments and studies are needed to further validate whether results support the existence of a causal relationship. A reaction mechanism can relate to discussions in different ways, many of which we did not analyze in our study (e.g., prevalence of hate speech [34,106] or user participation [42]). Reaction mechanisms can also play a variable role given different user demographics and the nature of the platform.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Upvotes? Downvotes? No Votes? Understanding the relationship between reaction mechanisms and political discourse on Reddit

Papakyriakopoulos,

Engelmann,

Winecoff

2023

Preprint

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A significant share of political discourse occurs online on social media platforms. Policymakers and researchers try to understand the role of social media design in shaping the quality of political discourse around the globe. In the past decades, scholarship on political discourse theory has produced distinct characteristics of different types of prominent political rhetoric such as deliberative, civic, or demagogic discourse. This study investigates the relationship between social media reaction mechanisms (i.e., upvotes, downvotes) and political rhetoric in user discussions by engaging in an in-depth conceptual analysis of political discourse theory. First, we analyze 155 million user comments in 55 political subforums on Reddit between 2010 and 2018 to explore whether users' style of political discussion aligns with the essential components of deliberative, civic, and demagogic discourse. Second, we perform a quantitative study that combines confirmatory factor analysis with difference in differences models to explore whether different reaction mechanism schemes (e.g., upvotes only, upvotes and downvotes, no reaction mechanisms) correspond with political user discussion that is more or less characteristic of deliberative, civic, or demagogic discourse. We produce three main takeaways. First, despite being "ideal constructs of political rhetoric," we find that political discourse theories describe political discussions on Reddit to a large extent. Second, we find that discussions in subforums with only upvotes, or both up-and downvotes are associated with user discourse that is more deliberate and civic. Third, and perhaps most strikingly, social media discussions are most demagogic in subreddits with no reaction mechanisms at all. These findings offer valuable contributions for ongoing policy discussions on the relationship between social media interface design and respectful political discussion among users. 1

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Upvotes? Downvotes? No Votes? Understanding the relationship between reaction mechanisms and political discourse on Reddit

Papakyriakopoulos,

Engelmann,

Winecoff

2023

Preprint

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“…Issues like the above raise questions about how to ideally design political machines that serve the society in an optimal way, given that many technological ecosystems are driven by financial incentives (Langlois and Elmer 2013), having unknown transformative effects on politics and society. For example, although political communication largely takes place on social media, these are not public, nor do they try to always remain politically impartial (Engelmann et al 2018;Leskovec et al 2010). The same applies for ADM systems that are deployed either by the state or are of high social value (Lepri et al 2018), which provide inferences in terms of mathematical probabilities (Ananny 2016).…”

Section: Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political machines: a framework for studying politics in social machines

Papakyriakopoulos

2021

AI & Soc

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In the age of ubiquitous computing and artificially intelligent applications, social machines serves as a powerful framework for understanding and interpreting interactions in socio-algorithmic ecosystems. Although researchers have largely used it to analyze the interactions of individuals and algorithms, limited attempts have been made to investigate the politics in social machines. In this study, I claim that social machines are per se political machines, and introduce a five-point framework for classifying influence processes in socio-algorithmic ecosystems. By drawing from scholars from political theory, I use a notion of influence that functions as a meta-concept for connecting and comparing different conceptions of politics. In this way, I can associate multiple political aspects of social machines from a cybernetic perspective. I show that the framework efficiently categorizes dimensions of influence that shape interactions between individuals and algorithms. These categories are symbolic influence, political conduct, algorithmic influence, design, and regulatory influence. Using case studies, I describe how they interact with each other on online social networks and in algorithmic decision-making systems and illustrate how the framework is able to guide scientists in further research.

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