4.3 Online data collection
4.5.2 Extending the framework
An immediately important item to note is that no posts or comments were submitted that did not fit within the scope of the types of manipulation
4.5. DISCUSSION
identified by administrators and moderators. This suggests that the ini- tial model of manipulation did not contain significant omissions in its broad classifications of manipulation: participants were free to provide additional commentary, and none complained of any lack of appropriate cateogry for the content that was being reported.
Additionally, more precise terms for the different types of manipu- lation were discovered. The ‘attention grabbing’ type of manipulation was the most diverse, with an additional thirteen sub-types of attention- grabbing manipulation.
Each additional sub-type of manipulation, therefore, may be used to add to the nascent framework of manipulation, presented in earlier chap- ters. These additions proved instrumental in gathering information on the impacts of manipulation, the report concerning which is presented in
Chapter 5.
4.5. DISCUSSION Attention- Grabbing Financial Gain Personality Voting Requesting
Upvotes Mass VotesOrganising
Appealing / Begging Offensive Faking stupidity Misleading Reference to Self Exclamation Marks Asking for Feedback
New Thread, Old Topic Caps Reference to Reddit Reference to Relationships Long Text Linkbait Promotion of Own Product or Service Branding "I'm Special" Sympathy Vote Cake Day Implicit Request Explicit Request
Why Was This Downvoted Discussion of Upvotes Spam Post Suppression Rewarding Upvotes 138
4.5. DISCUSSION
InChapter 3, a definition of manipulation was established. To reiterate
this definition: manipulation on social media sites is an attempt to change the global algorithmic relevance of content by changing its individual topical and affective relevance.
The study described in this chapter has explored the different types of manipulation initially identified in Chapter 3, and has identified sub- categories of several of these types. Having extended the categories of manipulation, these categories are now re-examined in the context of the above definition. Specifically, each category and sub-category of manipu- lation identified in this chapter can be examined and the form of relevance that it is attempting to influence can be named. This is presented inFig- ure 4.4.
4.5.
DISCUSSION
Algorithmic Encouragement of direct changes to the votes for content Discussion of Upvotes
Seeks to provoke a feeling of sympathy for the poster's reception Why Was This Downvoted Affective
Organising Mass Votes
Seeks to directly increase the vote count of the content Explicit Request Algorithmic
Affective / Algorithmic Seeks to provoke a feeling of sympathy for the poster's lack of recognition Implicit Request
Requesting Upvotes
Satisfaction from acknowledging someone's commitment to community Cake Day Affective
Affective
Sympathy Vote Satisfaction from "helping someone out" via vote Topical Hopes to transfer interest in poster to interest in topic I'm Special
Personality Voting
Seeks to provoke a reaction, often humour Offensive Affective
Seeks to provoke an emotional reaction through emotive punctuation Exclamation Marks Affective
Affective
Faking stupidity Seeks to provoke feelings of satisfaction through amusement at the poster Appealing / Begging Affective Seeks to provoke feelings of community support
Misleading Cognitive Pretends to be new information
Seeks to provoke feelings of community support Reference to Self Affective
Affective Seeks to provoke feelings of satisfaction through outrage, sympathy, curiosity Linkbait
Topical Seeks to increase likelihood of the content matching the topic the reader is seeking New Thread, Old Topic
Seeks to satisfy user feelings of community engagement Reference to Reddit Affective
Justification Pretends to match topics the user is seeking
Seeks to provide as much information as possible to establish topicality
Satisfaction from providing exposure to a follow community member's friend/relation
Seeks to provoke an emotional reaction through interpreting the post as "shouting" Either direct reward for up votes, or satisfaction for helping a cause
Seeks to satisfy user desire to provide opinion Caps Affective
Asking for Feedback Affective Long Text Topical
Affective Reference to Relationships Type of Relevance Spam Attention-grabbing Topical Manipulation Type Affective / Algorithmic Rewarding upvotes 140
4.6. SUMMARY
4.6 Summary
This chapter has reported on the web-based data collection study that comprises the second phase of the research. In developing a web-based tool for gathering user perspectives on manipulation, and the relative preva- lence of different types of manipulation, a significantly more thorough ex- ploration of manipulation was made possible.
This chapter has achieved the objectives stated in Section 4.2.1 in the following ways:
• Attention-grabbing manipulation has been identified as the most preva-
lent form of manipulation, relative to the other types identified in
Chapter 3, and was found to have the widest range of different in-
terpretations by end-users. It is therefore justifiable to claim that attention-grabbing manipulation is likely to be the type of manip- ulation that has the greatest impact on users.
• A second-round analysis of the framework inChapter 3has demon-
strated that the framework holds up when given to a wider audi- ence for evaluation. No data was submitted that was found to not fit within the framework proposed.
• A web-based data collection tool was developed and evaluated; the
software worked well for its intended purpose, and the researchers intend on continuing to use this approach for in-situ data collection purposes.
Having explored the various forms in which manipulation was en- countered by users of the site, it became possible to now consider the impact of this manipulation on the user’s use of the site. Chapter 5, fol- lowing, discusses this at length.
5
Phase 3: User interviews
This chapter presents a discussion of Phase 3 of the overall research project: a series of interviews with users of Reddit, which aimed to gather infor- mation about what impact different types of manipulation have on users of the site.
In these interviews, users of Reddit who had previously participated in the earlier study were interviewed about their views on manipulation, on how various types of manipulation affected their use of Reddit. Partic- ipants were also asked questions regarding their use of Reddit in general, including what kinds of content caused them to continue reading the site, and what kinds caused them to stop reading.
5.1 Introduction
The third phase of the research presented in this thesis sought to create an understanding of how the various types of manipulation, which were identified inChapter 4, affected the users of social media sites.
In previous chapters, this research had confirmed several underlying factors:
5.1. INTRODUCTION
• Chapter 3had determined that manipulation is seen by moderators
as an issue. Additionally,Chapter 3 identified the different kinds of manipulation seen.
• Chapter 4confirmed that users of the site also see manipulation, and
provided a finer-grained analysis of these different kinds.
The key element missing from these two previous studies, which is now addressed in this chapter, is a lack of understanding of how different kinds of manipulation affect the users of the site. While previous chapters identified that manipulation was a problem that took multiple forms, no attempt had yet been made to determine the various ways that manipula- tion changed the behaviour of users of the site.
It is important to note that the study presented in this chapter was not intended to attempt to quantify the impact of manipulation on users; rather, by gathering viewpoints from site users on the various kinds of im- pact that manipulation has on them, the research enabled the construction a framework for addressing those impacts.
5.1.1 Chapter Structure
The structure used by this chapter is as follows:
• Section 5.2 discusses the approach taken for the study presented in
this chapter, presents the overall methodology and objectives, and discusses ethical considerations.
• Section 5.3presents the findings of this chapter, and discusses their
implications for the research presented in this thesis.
• Section 5.4discusses the findings of the chapter in the context of the
5.2. APPROACH
• Section 5.5summarises the work presented in this chapter.
5.2 Approach
In order to gather information about how users are affected by manipu- lation, a more in-depth approach to gathering information was required: while the web-based data collection tool used in Chapter 4 served well in gathering a broad collection of information, generating deeper under- standing of the effects that manipulation had on users required a deeper approach.
The approach taken in this third phase mirrored that of the first phase, discussed inSection 3.2. Semi-structured interviews were carried out and the results analysed, following the same methodology of both data collec- tion and analysis as used inChapter 3.
The structure of this section is the following:
• Section 5.2.1discusses the objectives of this study.
• Section 5.2.2discusses the ethical precautions taken during the study.
• Section 5.2.3discusses the contributions made by this chapter.
• Section 5.2.4 presents the methodological approach used to collect
the data.
• Section 5.2.5discusses the recruitment process for the study, and de-
scribes the participants.
5.2.1 Objectives
The overall objective of this study was to collect specific, detailed infor- mation about what different impacts manipulation has on the users of a
5.2. APPROACH
social media site (namely Reddit), in support of the overall goals of the research defined inSection 1.2. Alongside this overall goal, the study was also intended to gather user perspectives on the web-based data collection tool used inChapter 4.
In order to gather specific, useful information about the impact of ma- nipulation on users, specific objectives were indentified:
• to determine the specific actions that users took when they saw manipula- tion, and
• to determine the severity of the impact that manipulation had.
The author began this study with several presumed actions that it was felt users were likely to take, such as down-voting manipulating content; however, this was likely to be incomplete and lacked grounding in the data.
It was also felt by the author that different kinds of manipulation would have varying degrees of impact on users. While no attempt to quantify this impact was made, an understanding of how harmful certain manipulation techniques were was a desired outcome.
By validating the data collected in earlier chapters and by creating a deeper understanding of user behaviour on the site covered in this case study, the finalisation and validation of the framework of ranking manip- ulation was made possible.
5.2.2 Ethics
As with the interviews conducted in phase 1 of the research, the following precautions were taken when conducting the interviews presented in this chapter:
5.2. APPROACH
• Participants were not asked for any personally identifying informa-
tion. When analysis began, all names, usernames and other pseudonyms were removed.
• Participants were free, at any time, to withdraw from the study, prior
to the data collection being completed.
• Participants were informed that no judgements were being made re-
garding their behaviour on the site, or their interests or preferred topic.
The study described in this section was approved as a Minimal Risk Study by the Tasmanian Human Research Ethics Committee. The refer- ence number for this study was H0013714.
5.2.3 Contributions
This chapter makes the following contributions to the overall research:
• The types of impacts that different kinds of manipulation have on
site users is identified.
• The severity of different impacts, gleaned from conversations with
users, is identified and discussed.
• A more complete evaluation of manipulation, and the various forms
it takes.
5.2.4 Design
Data for the study presented in this chapter was gathered through a series of semi-structured interviews. Semi-structured interviews, as has already
5.2. APPROACH
been noted inSection 3.3.1.1, have proven an excellent tool for collecting ‘deep’ information about a topic. The reader is directed toSection 3.3.1for a more detailed discussion of semi-structured interviews, including their strengths and weaknesses.
A fine-grained, systematic approach to the analysis of the data col- lected in this study was required; asKjeldskov and Graham (2003) notes, the rich, natural character of data collected through semi-structured in- terviews requires careful analysis in order to overcome the often contra- dictory nature of the information gathered. Accordingly, a grounded ap- proach (as perCorbin and Strauss 1990) was used to analyse the collected information, and derive the findings presented inSection 5.3.