Reasons for Sharing With Separate Social Media Audiences During Life Transitions

During life transitions, people sometimes turn to social media audiences separate from their typical online networks. By qualitatively analyzing open-ended data from a U.S.-based survey (N = 775), we examined why and how people discuss life transitions with these separate audiences. Survey questions asked about life events experienced, separate networks and the interactions that occurred there, and participants’ reasoning behind these online behaviors. We found that people use separate networks, especially online support groups, to interact with others anonymously, receive informational and emotional support, and have direct and focused discussions with people with similar experiences.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162570/1/LiuReasonsForSharing.pdfSEL

The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community online: discussions of bullying and self-disclosure in YouTube videos

Computer-mediated communication has become a popular platform for identity construction and experimentation as well as social interaction for those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT). The creation of user-generated videos has allowed content creators to share experiences on LGBT topics. With bullying becoming more common amongst LGBT youth, it is important to obtain a greater understanding of this phenomenon. In our study, we report on the analysis of 151 YouTube videos which were identified as having LGBT- and bullying-related content. The analysis reveals how content creators openly disclose personal information about themselves and their experiences in a non-anonymous rhetoric with an unknown public. These disclosures could indicate a desire to seek friendship, support and provide empathy

Safe Social Spaces

Technologies that mediate social interaction can put our privacy and our safety at risk. Harassment, intimate partner violence and surveillance, data insecurity, and revenge porn are just a few of the harms that bedevil technosocial spaces and their users, particularly users from marginalized communities. This Article seeks to identify the building blocks of safe social spaces, or environments in which individuals can share personal information at low risk of privacy threats. Relying on analogies to offline social spaces—Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, teams of coworkers, and attorney-client relationships—this Article argues that if a social space is defined as an environment characterized by disclosure, then a safe social space is one in which disclosure norms are counterbalanced by equally as powerful norms of trust that are both endogenously designed in and backed exogenously by law. Case studies of online social networks and social robots are used to show how both the design and law governing technosocial spaces today not only do not support trust, but actively undermine user safety by eroding trust and limiting the law’s regulatory power. The Article concludes with both design and law reform proposals to better build and protect trust and safe social spaces

Engagement Patterns of Peer-to-Peer Interactions on Mental Health Platforms

Mental illness is a global health problem, but access to mental healthcare resources remain poor worldwide. Online peer-to-peer support platforms attempt to alleviate this fundamental gap by enabling those who struggle with mental illness to provide and receive social support from their peers. However, successful social support requires users to engage with each other and failures may have serious consequences for users in need. Our understanding of engagement patterns on mental health platforms is limited but critical to inform the role, limitations, and design of these platforms. Here, we present a large-scale analysis of engagement patterns of 35 million posts on two popular online mental health platforms, TalkLife and Reddit. Leveraging communication models in human-computer interaction and communication theory, we operationalize a set of four engagement indicators based on attention and interaction. We then propose a generative model to jointly model these indicators of engagement, the output of which is synthesized into a novel set of eleven distinct, interpretable patterns. We demonstrate that this framework of engagement patterns enables informative evaluations and analysis of online support platforms. Specifically, we find that mutual back-and-forth interactions are associated with significantly higher user retention rates on TalkLife. Such back-and-forth interactions, in turn, are associated with early response times and the sentiment of posts.Comment: Accepted to ICWSM 202

Two Sides to Every Story: Investigating changes in cultural attitudes using discourse analysis in computer-mediated infidelity discussions

Despite overt cultural consensus on the reprehensible nature of infidelity, prevalence rates of infidelity behavior remain elevated— highlighting a substantial discrepancy between widely-accepted infidelity practices and actual behavior. To understand this incongruence and elucidate the cultural meaning of infidelity, communication surrounding infidelity warrants extensive scrutiny. The study employs methods of discourse analysis to investigate three Reddit threads from 2017, 2019, and 2021, that address infidelity. I make a case that recent changes in the discourse surrounding infidelity reflect changes in broader societal attitudes and accepted practices concerning infidelity. Using empirical methods of discourse analysis, I conducted three analytical procedures to describe the computer-mediated communication surrounding infidelity on Reddit. These descriptions focus on the structural descriptive statistics and modified speech act analysis of the user discourse. Findings indicate that the changes in the user discourse structure over the past five years signify cultural advancements toward more supportive perspectives of infidelity. The analyses evidence stronger convictions surrounding infidelity, yet they also reveal increased uncertainty regarding the criteria for infidelity. Overall, the Reddit discourse signals a potential cultural shift toward higher rates of self-disclosure and prosocial support for those who have participated in or been affected by acts of infidelity

A Study of User Behaviors and Activities on Online Mental Health Communities

abstract: Social media is a medium that contains rich information which has been shared by many users every second every day. This information can be utilized for various outcomes such as understanding user behaviors, learning the effect of social media on a community, and developing a decision-making system based on the information available. With the growing popularity of social networking sites, people can freely express their opinions and feelings which results in a tremendous amount of user-generated data. The rich amount of social media data has opened the path for researchers to study and understand the users’ behaviors and mental health conditions. Several studies have shown that social media provides a means to capture an individual state of mind. Given the social media data and related work in this field, this work studies the scope of users’ discussion among online mental health communities. In the first part of this dissertation, this work focuses on the role of social media on mental health among sexual abuse community. It employs natural language processing techniques to extract topics of responses, examine how diverse these topics are to answer research questions such as whether responses are limited to emotional support; if not, what other topics are; what the diversity of topics manifests; how online response differs from traditional response found in a physical world. To answer these questions, this work extracts Reddit posts on rape to understand the nature of user responses for this stigmatized topic. In the second part of this dissertation, this work expands to a broader range of online communities. In particular, it investigates the potential roles of social media on mental health among five major communities, i.e., trauma and abuse community, psychosis and anxiety community, compulsive disorders community, coping and therapy community, and mood disorders community. This work studies how people interact with each other in each of these communities and what these online forums provide a resource to users who seek help. To understand users’ behaviors, this work extracts Reddit posts on 52 related subcommunities and analyzes the linguistic behavior of each community. Experiments in this dissertation show that Reddit is a good medium for users with mental health issues to find related helpful resources. Another interesting observation is an interesting topic cluster from users’ posts which shows that discussion and communication among users help individuals to find proper resources for their problem. Moreover, results show that the anonymity of users in Reddit allows them to have discussions about different topics beyond social support such as financial and religious support.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Computer Science 201

The Impact of #MeToo on Reasons for Sexual Assault Disclosure

Sexual assault is a long-standing widespread problem. Yet, despite the high prevalence of sexual assault, it is the most underreported crime of all crimes reported to the police (Bureau of Justice, 2018). The #MeToo movement has had a significant impact on the way in which sexual assault survivors disclose their experiences and the reasons they disclose. Disclosure appears to be an important factor in survivors’ healing from their assault, with increasing coping, greater attachment to others, and positive growth cited as effects of disclosure provided that the response to the disclosure is positive to the survivor (Ahrens & Aldana, 2012; Borja et al., 2006; Frazier et al., 2004, Orchowski & Gidycz, 2012). Yet, there is limited literature regarding differences in reasons for disclosure. Guided by the Disclosure Process Model (Chaudoir & Fisher, 2001) this study sought to compare reasons for disclosure across three different disclosure experiences: interpersonally before #MeToo, interpersonally after #MeToo, and on social media after #MeToo. Differences for reasons for disclosure were measured by Reasons for Disclosing Sexual and Intimate Partner Violence Scale (RDSIPVS) (Turner et al., 2019). Survivors’ reflections on #MeToo, disclosure satisfaction and mental health functioning, as measured by experience of PTSD symptoms and adaptive coping were also examined. Data were analyzed using a one-way between-subjects analysis of variance (ANOVA) (Field, 2018). Results indicated that differences in reasons for disclosure exist between the three disclosure process experiences and that the #MeToo movement may have impacted specific reasons for disclosure. Survivors’ reflections were the #MeToo movement are positive. However, among survivors who received negative reactions from participating in #MeToo, many suffered particularly harmful reactions. Survivors reported elevated levels of trauma symptoms with a wide range of levels coping. Findings indicate the importance of disclosure recipients, particularly mental health professionals, understanding reasons for disclosure and the potential role of social media in disclosure processes

Social Role Transitions and Technology: Societal Change and Coping in Online Communities

Technological and societal changes unfold in relation to one another. Many events like becoming a parent, getting divorced, or getting a medical diagnosis dictate a change in one’s social role. Social role transition can have negative consequences including stress, stigmatization, and disempowerment. Social interactions, especially communicating with allies and those facing similar conditions, can alleviate the psychological burden of these challenges. The goal of this dissertation is to understand how people use technology to cope with social role change, and how the features of different online communities provide a range of ways to make sense of their social role transition, find support, and advocate for change. In the first study (Chapter 3), I qualitatively analyze interviews with fathers and a sam- ple of father blogs to show how fathers use do-it-yourself (DIY) language on blogs and in their online interactions as a means of redefining fatherhood. Fathers use the DIY concept to build their own father-centric online communities in order to manage some of the disad- vantages associated with the lack of parenting online communities that cater to them. This new framing of fatherhood allows fathers to make sense of their new role as parents, and at the same time, to redefine the social norms around fatherhood. In Chapter 4, I study how parents use social media sites at scale using natural language processing. The focus of the analysis is on Reddit, a social media site that allows users to comment under pseudonyms. I find that parents use pseudonymous social media sites to discuss topics that might otherwise be considered too sensitive to discuss on real-name social media sites such as Facebook (e.g., breastfeeding and sleep training). This study also outlines similarities and differences in discussion topics among mothers and father on Reddit (e.g., mothers discussing breastfeeding and fathers discussing divorce and custody). Finally, in Chapter 5, I use computational and qualitative methods to study how anony- mous accounts on Reddit (throwaway accounts) provide parents with varying levels of anonymity as they cope with social role changes by sharing potentially stigmatizing infor- mation (e.g., postpartum depression) or advocating for stigmatized identities (e.g., divorced fathers). Finally, based on my findings, I present design recommendations that could pro- mote better social support on platforms beyond Reddit.PHDInformationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162933/1/tawfiqam_1.pd

The Online Authenticity Paradox: What Being “Authentic” on Social Media Means, and Barriers to Achieving It

People often strive to present themselves authentically on social media, but this may not be possible for everyone. To understand how people view online authenticity, how it relates to social media sharing behaviors, and whether it is achievable, we interviewed 28 social media users who had recently experienced major life transitions. We found that to many participants, online authenticity required presenting a consistent, positive, and “true” self across online and offline contexts. Though most stated that they considered online authenticity achievable, their social media self-disclosure behaviors around life transitions revealed what we call the online authenticity paradox: people strive to achieve online authenticity, yet because doing so requires sharing negative experiences on social media, online authenticity is often unreachable, or is possible only at great personal cost – especially for those with marginalized identities and difficult life experiences.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/169586/1/V5cscw423-haimsonA.pdfDescription of V5cscw423-haimsonA.pdf : Main articleSEL

Rape in the Nordic Countries

While the Nordic countries are listed at the top in most international rankings of gender equality and citizens’ feelings of security, studies on the prevalence of sexual victimisation present a different picture, suggesting that the very countries that have invested much in establishing gender equality actually see a high prevalence of sexual violence. This book sheds light on the phenomenon and construction of rape and other forms of sexual violence within the Nordic region, exploring the ways in which rape and sexual violence are dealt with through criminal law and considering governmental policies aimed at combatting it, with a special focus on legal regulations and developments. Thematically organised, it offers new research on perpetrators, victimhood, criminal justice and prevention. Multi-disciplinary in approach, it brings together the latest work from a range of scholars to offer insights into the situation in the five Nordic countries, asking how and why rape and other forms of sexual violence occur, whilst also addressing the timely issues of online sexual cultures, BDSM and the grey areas of sexual offences. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, criminology and law with interests in gender and sexual violence