Shaping Pro and Anti-Social Behavior on Twitch Through Moderation and Example-Setting

ABSTRACT

Online communities have the potential to be supportive, cruel, or anywhere in between. The development of positive norms for interaction can help users build bonds, grow, and learn. Using millions of messages sent in Twitch chatrooms, we explore the effectiveness of methods for encouraging and discouraging specific behaviors, including taking advantage of imitation effects through setting positive examples and using moderation tools to discourage antisocial behaviors. Consistent with aspects of imitation theory and deterrence theory, users imitated examples of behavior that they saw, and more so for behaviors from high status users. Proactive moderation tools, such as chat modes which restricted the ability to post certain content, proved effective at discouraging spam behaviors, while reactive bans were able to discourage a wider variety of behaviors. This work considers the intersection of tools, authority, and types of behaviors, offering a new frame through which to consider the development of moderation strategies.

References

1. Akers, R. L., & Cochran, J. K. 1985. Adolescent marijuana use: A test of three theories of deviant behavior. Deviant Behavior. 6, 4: 323--346.
2. Akers, R. L., & La Greca, A. J. 1991. Alcohol use among the elderly: Social learning, community context, and life events. In Society, culture, and drinking patterns reexamined. 242--262.
3. Akers, R. L., & Lee, G. 1996. A longitudinal test of social learning theory: Adolescent smoking. Journal of Drug Issues. 26, 2: 317--343.
4. Akers, R. L., Skinner, W. F., Krohn, M. D., & Lauer, R. M. 1987. Recent trends in teenage tobacco usefindings from a 5-year longitudinal study. Sociology and Social Research. 71, 2: 110--114.
5. AnyKey. 2016. AnyKey Workshop #2 White Paper: Barriers to inclusion and retention: The role of community management and moderation.
6. Aral, S., & Walker, D. 2011. Creating social contagion through viral product design: A randomized trial of peer influence in networks. Management Science. 57, 9: 1623--1639.
7. Asch, S. E. 1956. Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological monographs: General and applied. 70, 9: 1.
8. Bakshy, E., Rosenn, I., Marlow, C., & Adamic, L. April. The role of social networks in information diffusion. In Proceedings of the 21st international conference on World Wide Web, 519--528. ACM.
9. Bayer, J. B., Ellison, N. B., Schoenebeck, S. Y., & Falk, E. B. 2015. Sharing the small moments: ephemeral social interaction on Snapchat. Information, Communication & Society, 1--22.
10. boyd, d. 2014. It's complicated: The social lives of networked teens. Yale University Press.
11. Chartrand, T. L., & Bargh, J. A. 1999. The chameleon effect: The perception-behavior link and social interaction. Journal of personality and social psychology, 76, 6: 893.
12. Cialdini, R. B. 2009. Influence: Science and practice (Vol. 4). Pearson Education.
13. Citron, D. K. 2014. Hate crimes in cyberspace. Harvard University Press.
14. Coleman, G. 2014. Hacker, hoaxer, whistleblower, spy: The many faces of Anonymous. Verso Books.
15. Das, S., Kramer, A. D., Dabbish, L. A., & Hong, J. I. 2015. The Role of Social Influence In Security Feature Adoption. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW '15), 1416--1426.
16. Donath, J. 1996. Identity and deception in the virtual community. In Communities in cyberspace. 29--59.
17. Feigenbaum, J., Hendler, J. A., Jaggard, A. D., Weitzner, D. J., & Wright, R. N. 2011. Accountability and deterrence in online life. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Web Science Conference, 7.
18. Fotigames. 2015. "How to Handle Malicious Viewers/Trolls". From https://www.reddit.com/r/Twitch/comments/3p4px8/ho w_to_handle_malicious_viewers_trolls/. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
19. Fox, J., & Tang, W. Y. 2016. Women's experiences with general and sexual harassment in online video games: Rumination, organizational responsiveness, withdrawal, and coping strategies. New Media & Society. March 8, 2016.
20. Goldenberg, D. 2015. "How Kappa Became the Face of Twitch". Five-thirty-eight. Retrieved 21 May 2016.
21. Hamilton, W. A., Garretson, O., & Kerne, A. 2014. Streaming on twitch: fostering participatory communities of play within live mixed media. In Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems, 1315--1324. ACM.
22. Harry, D. 2014. "Past and Future of Game Spectating". Speakerdeck.com. Retrieved 21 May 2016.
23. Herring, S., Job-Sluder, K., Scheckler, R., & Barab, S. 2002. Searching for safety online: Managing "trolling" in a feminist forum. The Information Society. 18, 5: 371--384.
24. Higgins, G. E., Fell, B. D., & Wilson, A. L. 2006. Digital piracy: Assessing the contributions of an integrated self-control theory and social learning theory using structural equation modeling. Criminal Justice Studies. 19, 1: 3--22.
25. Higgins, G. E., Wilson, A. L., & Fell, B. D. 2005. An application of deterrence theory to software piracy. Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture. 12, 3: 166--184.
26. Hofling, C. K., Brotzman, E., Dalrymple, S., Graves, N., & Pierce, C. M. 1966. An experimental study in nurse-physician relationships. The Journal of nervous and mental disease. 143, 2: 171--180.
27. Hogg, M. A. 2001. A social identity theory of leadership. Personality and social psychology review. 5, 3: 184--200.
28. Houston, T. K., Cooper, L. A., & Ford, D. E. 2014. Internet support groups for depression: a 1-year prospective cohort study. American Journal of Psychiatry.
29. Kittur, A., Pendleton, B., & Kraut, R. E. 2009. Herding the cats: the influence of groups in coordinating peer production. In Proceedings of the 5th international Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration (p. 7). ACM.
30. Kraut, R. E., & Resnick, P. 2012. Building Successful Online Communities: Evidence-Based Social Design. MIT Press.
31. Levmore, S., & Nussbaum, M. C. 2010. The Offensive Internet. Harvard University Press.
32. Li, X., & Nergadze, N. 2009. Deterrence effect of four legal and extralegal factors on online copyright infringement. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 14, 2: 307--327.
33. Maiberg, E. 2014. "Twitch ranked 4th in peak internet traffic, ahead of Valve, Facebook, Hulu". From http://www.gamespot.com/articles/twitch-ranked-4thin-peak-internet-traffic-ahead-of-valve-facebookhulu/1100-6417621/. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
34. Marwick, A. E. 2013. Status update: Celebrity, publicity, and branding in the social media age. Yale University Press.
35. Milgram, S. 1978. Obedience to authority. Harpercollins College.
36. Munroe, R. 2008. "ROBOT9000 and #xkcd-signal: Attacking Noise in Chat". From blog.xkcd.com. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
37. Nagin, D. S. 1998. Criminal deterrence research at the outset of the twenty-first century. Crime and justice, 142.
38. Nolan, J. M., Schultz, P. W., Cialdini, R. B., Goldstein, N. J., & Griskevicius, V. 2008. Normative social influence is underdetected. Personality and social psychology bulletin. 34, 7: 913--923.
39. Peters, D. P., & Ceci, S. J. 1982. Peer-review practices of psychological journals: The fate of published articles, submitted again. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 5, 2: 187--195.
40. Phillips, D. P. 1974. The influence of suggestion on suicide: Substantive and theoretical implications of the Werther effect. American Sociological Review, 340354.
41. Phillips, W. 2011. LOLing at tragedy: Facebook trolls, memorial pages and resistance to grief online. First Monday. 16, 12.
42. PsychCentral. 2008. Terms of Use, from http://psychcentral.com/about/terms.htm. Retrieved 8 Mar 2008.
43. Quantcast. 2016. "Twitch.tv Traffic and Demographics." From https://www.quantcast.com/twitch.tv. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
44. Resnick, P. 2001. The social cost of cheap pseudonyms. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy. 10, 2: 173--199.
45. Romero, D. M., Meeder, B., & Kleinberg, J. 2011. Differences in the mechanics of information diffusion across topics: idioms, political hashtags, and complex contagion on twitter. In Proceedings of the 20th international conference on World wide web, 695--704.
46. Scott-Parker, B., Hyde, M. K., Watson, B., & King, M. J. 2013. Speeding by young novice drivers: What can personal characteristics and psychosocial theory add to our understanding?. Accident Analysis & Prevention. 50: 242--250.
47. Shadish, W. R., Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. 2002. Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for generalized causal inference. Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
48. Sherif, M. 1936. The psychology of social norms. Harper.
49. Stafford, M. C., & Warr, M. 1993. A reconceptualization of general and specific deterrence. Journal of research in crime and delinquency, 30(2), 123--135.
50. Suler. 2004. The online disinhibition effect. Cyberpsychology & behavior. 7, 3: 321--326.
51. Taylor, T. L. 2009. Play between worlds: Exploring online game culture. MIT Press.
52. Tonry, M. 2008. Learning from the limitations of deterrence research. Crime and Justice. 37, 1: 279--311.
53. Wheeler, L. 1966. Toward a theory of behavioral contagion. Psychological Review. 73, 2: 179.
54. Ybarra, M. L., & Mitchell, K. J. 2008. How risky are social networking sites? A comparison of places online where youth sexual solicitation and harassment occurs. Pediatrics. 121, 2: e350-e357.
55. Zhu, H., Kraut, R., & Kittur, A. 2012. Organizing without formal organization: group identification, goal setting and social modeling in directing online production. In Proceedings of the ACM 2012 conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 935--944. ACM.

Index Terms

• Human-centered computing

  • Collaborative and social computing