Information Studies Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2780

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Designing Cyberbullying Prevention and Mitigation Tools
(2017) Ashktorab, Zahra; Vitak, Jessica; Golbeck, Jennifer; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
While cyberbullying is prevalent among adolescents, attempts by researchers to evaluate mechanisms for its prevention and mitigation have been largely non-existent. In this dissertation, I argue that the complex nature of cyberbullying, made more challenging by the affordances of diverse social media, cannot be solved through strictly algorithmic approaches. Instead, I employ multidisciplinary methods to evaluate data generated by teens on social media and work with teens to develop and test potential cyberbullying mitigation solutions. I further argue that solutions focused on improving users' well-being after being targeted online offer designers a valuable tool in fighting back against the harm caused by cyberbullying. Based on the interdisciplinary studies conducted in this dissertation, I offer design recommendations for cyberbullying prevention and mitigation tools. I address the mitigation of adolescent cyberbullying through a multi-methodological approach: 1) data-centric exploratory study of discourse occurring alongside cyberbullying 2) an experimental design of reactions to positive messages in response to cyberbullying 3) human-centered participatory design to design cyberbullying mitigation prototypes and 4) a longitudinal study evaluating the effectiveness of cyberbullying mitigation tools. I offer design recommendations for building and administering cyberbullying mitigation tools. This dissertation begins with a data-centric study to understand \textit{why} users are motivated to post and interact through ASKfm, a social media platform that affords cyberbullying and how anonymity and the site's other affordances affect these interactions. I discuss the unique affordances specific to semi-anonymous Q\&A social media platforms and how such affordances enable users to engage in self-disclosure and gaining social support on sensitive topics. I then present two studies to first determine if users will be receptive to anonymous positive messages responding to bullying messages, then to administer positive messages or \textit{Cyberbully Reversal Pings} to ASKfm users who have received bullying messages. I then use a human-centered approach methodology to co-design cyberbullying prototypes with teens. I use the design recommendations derived from the participatory design study to test the impact of a cyberbullying mitigation system. I address technological mechanisms to mitigate sadness and decline in well-being caused by negative online experiences and cyberbullying. I administer cyberbullying mitigation through technology-mediated memory; in other words, I use positive posts and images participants have previously shared on social media to remind them of existing social support in users’ social networks. The studies in this dissertation comprise of a mixed methods approach to understand social media platforms on which cyberbullying occurs, work collaboratively with users to design mitigation platforms and ultimately evaluate a cyberbullying mitigation platform with real users. These aforementioned studies result in design recommendations for building cyberbullying mitigation tools and design recommendations for designing a study to evaluate a cyberbullying mitigation tool.
Freedom to Tweet or Tweet to Freedom: The Relationship between Freedom Status and Tweets during Elections
(2013) Ashktorab, Zahra; Golbeck, Jen; Library & Information Services; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
In this thesis, I conduct an exploratory study of the relationship between a country's freedom and the twitter activity during elections. While there have been many studies of Twitter and elections, there has been no previous research conducted to explore the relationship between a countries' freedom and how Twitter influences elections in that given country. My goal is to identify hypotheses for future work in this area, introduce research designs and to shed light on areas of research where there seems to be little indication of relationships. I explore this space with automated analysis of the tweets' text, election outcomes, freedom ratings for the countries, and sentiment analysis. My results show that there seems to be a weak relationship between the outcome of an election and the sentiment expressed towards a candidate in tweets and that there is no relationship between the freedom in a given country and the sentiment expressed towards the incumbent. I found promising initial results regarding the relationship among content removed from links during an election and freedom status of a country, as well as the correlation between how frequently a candidate is mentioned and the election outcome. In the discussion, I present research questions in areas that are promising for future work.