Beyond Anonymity: Network Affordances, under Deindividuation, Improve Social Media Discussion Quality
- Author(s)
- Sophie Lecheler, Kokil Jaidka, Alvin Zhou, Yphtach Lelkes, Jana Laura Egelhofer
- Abstract
The online sphere allows people to be personally anonymous while simultaneously signaling social identity, e.g., through political network visibility. Twitter users can use a pseudonym but signal fealty to a political party in their profile (e.g., \#MAGA). We explore the interplay of these two dimensions of anonymity on a custom-built social media platform, that allowed us to examine the causal effects of personal and social anonymity on discussion quality. In discussions on gun rights, we find no support for the hypothesis that personal anonymity breeds incivility or lower discussion quality. On the other hand, when personal anonymity is combined with social identity (operationalized as political network visibility), it improves several features linked to discussion quality, i.e., higher rationality and lower incivility. We discuss the mechanisms that might explain the results, and offer recommendations for future experiments about the design of social media platforms.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Communication
- External organisation(s)
- National University of Singapore (NUS), University of Pennsylvania
- Journal
- Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
- Volume
- 27
- No. of pages
- 23
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmab019
- Publication date
- 01-2022
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 508020 Political communication
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Computer Networks and Communications, Computer Science Applications
- Portal url
- https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/beyond-anonymity-network-affordances-under-deindividuation-improve-social-media-discussion-quality(3431d080-1659-49d2-9662-e048f7ec6b2d).html