Attracting new members is vital to the health of many online communities. Yet, prior qualitative work suggests that newcomers to online communities can be disruptive -- either due to a lack of awareness around existing community norms or to differing expectations around how the community should operate. Consequently, communities may have to navigate a trade-off between growth and development of community identity. We evaluate the presence of this trade-off through a longitudinal analysis of two years of commenting data for each of 1,620 Reddit communities. We find that, on average, communities become less linguistically distinctive as they grow. These changes appear to be driven almost equally by newcomers and returning users. Surprisingly, neither heavily moderated communities nor communities undergoing major user-base diversification are any more or less likely to maintaining distinctiveness. Taken together, our results complicate the assumption that growth is inherently beneficial for online communities.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642769
While social media data is a valuable source for inferring human behavior, its in-practice utility hinges on extraneous factors. Notable is the ``observer effect,'' where awareness of being monitored can alter people's social media use. We present a causal-inference study to examine this phenomenon on the longitudinal Facebook use of 300+ participants who voluntarily shared their data spanning an average of 82 months before and 5 months after study enrollment. We measured deviation from participants' expected social media use through time series analyses. Individuals with high cognitive ability and low neuroticism decreased posting immediately after enrollment, and those with high openness increased posting. The sharing of self-focused content decreased, while diverse topics emerged. We situate the findings within theories of self-presentation and self-consciousness. We discuss the implications of correcting observer effect in social media data-driven measurements, and how this phenomenon shines light on the ethics of these measurements.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642078
User agency and control serve as cornerstones of design in HCI, with numerous studies finding that choice improves user experiences. However, few studies examine how users benefit from the act of choosing, independent from the fulfillment of their chosen option; making this distinction is crucial for refining guidelines on when to provide user control. In our experiment on YouTube, participants randomly experienced either a pre-roll ad, a mid-roll ad, or a choice between the two. Participants then rated their subjective experiences. Mid-roll ads negatively affected experience ratings, but ratings between those choosing a pre-roll ad and those assigned a pre-roll ad were similar. That is, the right ad timing had a much larger impact than choosing an ad timing. The findings suggest that user interfaces should not offer choices solely for the sake of offering choices, and suggest scenarios where automation would be preferable to fine-grained user control.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642869
Creating dedicated accounts to post users’ pet content is a growing trend on Instagram. While these account owners derive joy from this pursuit, they may also struggle with criticisms and challenges. Yet, there remains a knowledge gap on how pet account owners manage their pets' online presence and navigate these obstacles successfully. Drawing from interviews with 21 Instagram pet account owners, we uncover the motivations behind pet account creation, spanning personal, altruistic, and commercial goals. We learn about the strategies employed for crafting their pets' online identities and personas, as well as the challenges faced by both owners and their pets in navigating the complexities of digital identity management. We discuss the evolving dynamics between humans and their pets, positioning pet identity cultivation as a form of collaborative work, akin to the ``third shift'', highlighting the need to design interfaces that support this unique identity management process.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642367
As user-generated video dominates media landscapes, it poses an accessibility challenge. While disability advocacy groups globally have secured hard-won accessibility regulations for broadcast media, no such regulation of user-generated content exists. Yet, one major player in this shift, TikTok, has a culture of user-generated, creative captioning. We sought to understand how TikTok videos are captioned and the impact current practices have on those who need captions to access audio content. Therefore, we conducted a content analysis of 300 open-captioned TikToks and contextualized these findings by interviewing nine caption users. We found that the current state of TikTok captioning does facilitate access to the platform but that a user-generated, social video-specific standard for captioning could improve caption quality and expand access. We contribute an empirical account of the state of TikTok captioning and outline steps toward a standard for user-generated captioning.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642177