Year: 2024
Type: conference-paper
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Many researchers studying online communities seek to make them better. However, beyond a small set of widely-held values, such as combating misinformation and abuse, determining what `better’ means can be challenging, as community members may disagree, values may be in conflict, and different communities may have differing preferences as a whole. In this work, we present the first study that elicits values directly from members across a diverse set of communities. We survey 212 members of 627 unique subreddits and ask them to describe their values for their communities in their own words. Through iterative categorization of 1,481 responses, we develop and validate a comprehensive taxonomy of community values, consisting of 29 subcategories within nine top-level categories enabling principled, quantitative study of community values by researchers. Using our taxonomy, we reframe existing research problems, such as managing influxes of new members, as tensions between different values, and we identify understudied values, such as those regarding content quality and community size. We call for greater attention to vulnerable community members' values, and we make our codebook public for use in future research.
Authors: Galen Weld, Amy X. Zhang, Tim Althoff
Institution: University of Washington
Language: English
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
Awards: CAREER: Realizing the Potential of Behavioral Data Science for Population Health, EAGER: Partnering with Grab for Cross-ASEAN Regional Urban Insights, University of Washington Foundation - to develop new machine learning approaches to understand human health, G6671297155, G808836342, III: Large: Collaborative Research: Analysis Engineering for Robust End-to-End Data Science, G8876996369
OpenAlex ID: W3199811133