Browsing by Subject "governance"

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    Conference Paper
    Characterizations of Online Harassment: Comparing Policies Across Social Media Platforms
    (Proceedings of the 2016 ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work, 2016) Pater, Jessica A.; Kim, Moon K.; Mynatt, Elizabeth D.; Fiesler, Casey
    Harassment in online spaces is increasingly part of public debate and concern. Pervasive problems like cyberbullying, hate speech, and the glorification of self-harm have highlighted the breadth and depth of harassment taking place online. In this study we conduct a content analysis of the governing policies for fifteen social media platforms as they relate to harassment (of oneself and/or of community members) and other associated behaviors. We find that there is a striking inconsistency in how platform-specific policies depict harassment. Additionally, how these policies prescribe responses to harassment vary from mild censuring to the involvement of law enforcement. Finally, based on our analysis and findings, we discuss the potential for harnessing the power of the online communities to create norms around problematic behaviors.
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    Text Document
    Work-to-rule: the emergence of algorithmic governance in Wikipedia
    (Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Communities and Technologies - C&T '13, 2013) Müller-Birn, Claudia; Dobusch, Leonhard; Herbsleb, James D.
    Research has shown the importance of a functioning governance system for the success of peer production communities. It particularly highlights the role of human coordination and communication within the governance regime. In this article, we extend this line of research by differentiating two categories of governance mechanisms. The first category is based primarily on communication, in which social norms emerge that are often formalized by written rules and guidelines. The second category refers to the technical infrastructure that enables users to access artifacts, and that allows the community to communicate and coordinate their collective actions to create those artifacts. We collected qualitative and quantitative data from Wikipedia in order to show how a community's consensus gradually converts social mechanisms into algorithmic mechanisms. In detail, we analyze algorithmic governance mechanisms in two embedded cases: the software extension "flagged revisions" and the bot "xqbot". Our insights point towards a growing relevance of algorithmic governance in the realm of governing large-scale peer production communities. This extends previous research, in which algorithmic governance is almost absent. Further research is needed to unfold, understand, and also modify existing interdependencies between social and algorithmic governance mechanisms.