Social Norm Vulnerability and its Consequences for Privacy and Safety in an Online Community

Abstract

Within online communities, social norms that both set expectations for and regulate behavior can be vital to the overall welfare of the community--particularly in the context of the privacy and safety of its members. For communities where the cost of regulatory failure can be high, it is important to understand both the conditions under which norms might be effective, and when they might fail. As a case study, we consider transformative fandom, a creative community dedicated to reimagining existing media in often subversive ways. In part due to the marginalized status of many members, there are strong, longstanding norms to protect the community. Through an interview study with 25 fandom participants, we investigate social norms that have been largely effective over time at maintaining member privacy and safety, but also break down under certain circumstances. Catalysts for these breakdowns include tensions between sub-communities and an increasing presence of outsiders, though most prominently, we identify a disconnect between the norms the community needs to support and the design of the platforms they occupy.

Measuring Americans’ Comfort With Research Uses of Their Social Media Data

“…Fiesler and Proferes (2018) found that Twitter users are largely unaware that researchers are permitted to use public data without explicit consent and believe that researchers should not be able to use tweets without prior permission. However, prior work has also found that users’ attitudes about research use of social media data depend on contextual factors, such as how the research is conducted and the topic of the study (Fiesler & Proferes, 2018), the size of the community (Hudson & Bruckman, 2004), and who is using the data (Dym & Fiesler, 2020; Fiesler & Proferes, 2018; Gruzd & Mai, 2020). Qualitative research by Beninger (2017) explored users’ feelings about social media research, finding diverse responses across participants including skepticism about research using social media data; acceptance, particularly among those who viewed social media data as already public; and ambivalence among those who felt there was nothing that could be done to prevent being studied.…”

Black Lives, Green Books, and Blue Checks

“…In reporting our results, we note that prior work regarding research ethics for Twitter has shown some users may be uncomfortable with their content being amplified beyond the platform, particularly when the content is on a sensitive topic or the user is in a vulnerable position [21,23]. In weighing potential harms against the utility of direct quotes for this part of our analysis, we decided in reporting our results to employ ethical fabrication [55] and paraphrase tweets so that the substance is the same but that they are not discoverable through a search [15].…”

Building a Pillowfort: Political Tensions in Platform Design and Policy

“…For example, LGBTQ+ people use fan communities to explore their identity safely, away from harms they might experience for exploring that identity elsewhere, and to connect with LGBTQ+ communities and resources they cannot access anywhere else [18]. As a result, fan communities also have strong social norms around privacy and secrecy to keep those vulnerable community members safe [11,20].…”