Evaluation of the web browser extension

Participants were asked to reflect upon how the web browser extension af- fected their use of Reddit. Participants reported generally positive feelings about their use of the software; the following comment from an interview participant indicates a representative viewpoint:

“I’d often be like, “oh, I wonder if I should report that? Should I bother reporting that?” I wouldn’t say it changed it substantially, but it did change it a little bit. You’d spend a moment or two musing over whether content was worth reporting or not.

It caused me to think more about the content that I probably wouldn’t normally think about. But I go to a lot of niche subreddits.”

Another participant indicated similar sentiments with regard to the software causing them to spend more time thinking about content on the website, and about content manipulation on the website:

“Yes, I was more on the lookout for things that could be consid- ered manipulation. For a brief period, if I was bored, it gave me some- thing to do on Reddit by searching, using the search feature to search

5.4. DISCUSSION

for words commonly associated with some of those things, so I could specifically flag them. Or just have a look at them. And I still some- what do that, even though I don’t have the extension installed at the moment.

(Interviewer: So, you now actually...)

Find things to get angry at, yes.”

One participant felt that their overall experience of Reddit was en- hanced as a result of participating:

“I found myself paying a lot more attention to posts and their techniques than I usually do. It was really nice, actually.”

It is worth re-iterating that the web browser extension, when installed, was a relatively visible piece of software: all pages on Reddit viewed by the user were modified to some degree, and while the software was de- signed to not deliberately interfere with normal use, the modifications made by the software to the user’s experience of Reddit were pervasive.

Nonetheless, no participants interviewed provided any negative feed- back on how the software changed their experience of Reddit; indeed, as has been noted in the comments above, several found it provided a posi- tive experience. The author is therefore comfortable in concluding that the use of the web-based data collection tool was a success.

5.4 Discussion

This section discusses and interprets the findings of the study presented in this chapter. It is worth reiterating at this point that the goal of the study presented in this chapter does not attempt to draw connections between the types of manipulation identified in Chapter 3and Chapter 4. Rather,

5.5. SUMMARY

the study aims to provide a broader understanding of what kinds of im- pacts exist.

The analysis of the data collected in this study revealed three main categories of impact types: direct impacts, which have an immediate or near-immediate effect on the user’s behaviour on the social media site, indirect impacts, which have a cumulative effect on the user’s use of the site, and positive impacts, which may be considered to be a sub-type of indirect impacts that have a beneficial impact on the user’s use of the site. As was noted in Section 5.3.3, participants identified several types of impacts as having a neutral or positive impact on their use of the site. This was surprising to the author; both of the previous studies indicated that content ranking manipulation was perceived to have negative conse- quences for end-users, by both administrators and moderators in the first study, and by the participants in the second.

This has interesting implications for the topic of content ranking ma- nipulation as a whole, as it changes the focus of the disussion from one centered on ameliorating negative impacts to one in which the impact of manipulation upon the user must be identified as positive, negative or neutral.

5.5 Summary

This chapter has reported on the third and final phase of data collection used in this research. Broadly, this study has achieved the objectives set out bySection 5.2.1in the following ways:

• The types of impact that manipulation can have on users have been

5.5. SUMMARY

• The definition of spam held by participants has been noted to ex-

tend toanylow-value content, and is not limited to unsolicited bulk messaging.

• The choice of methodology used inChapter 4has been validated by

demonstrating that participants found the web browser extension to be unintrusive, and in fact improved the experience of browsing Reddit in some cases.

The following chapter,Chapter 6, integrates the findings and contribu- tions made by the three phases of data collection, and presents the overall findings of the research presented in this thesis.

6

Discussion

This chapter integrates the findings of each of the three previous phases of the study, and discusses their implications. A model of manipulation and its impact upon social media communities is presented and discussed.

6.1 Introduction

The overarching premise of this research was that there is insufficient re- search into the impact of ranking manipulation on social media sites. In order to address this absence, the research presented in this thesis has conducted several studies that seek to create an understanding of what manipulation is, in the context of social media sites, as well as an understanding of how manipulation affects the behaviour of the users of those sites.

The findings of these studies have provided sufficient material to al- low the construction of a framework for discussing manipulation and its effects. In this chapter, the findings from previous chapters are integrated, and the framework is constructed.

Following this, the chapter then discusses the applications of the frame- work in a variety of cases: from the perspective of social media site admin-

6.1. INTRODUCTION

istrators, from the perspective of users who post content to social media sites, and from the perspective of developers who seek to improve the quality of the user experience of social media sites.

To review: the research presented thus far has achieved the following:

• A definition of manipulation has been created, grounded in both the

perspective of administrators and users (first presented inChapter 3

and elaborated inChapter 4.)

• Different types of manipulation have been explored, and a classifica-

tion of these types has been created (inChapter 4.)

• The various types of impacts that manipulation have on users has

been explored, and the research has found that these range from ac- tively driving people away from the site to enhancing the user expe- rience and clarifying it (inChapter 5.)