Journal article
Social Support, Reciprocity, and Anonymity in Responses to Sexual Abuse Disclosures on Social Media
ACM transactions on computer-human interaction, v 25(5), pp 1-35
01 Oct 2018
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
Seeking and providing support is challenging. When people disclose sensitive information, audience responses can substantially impact the discloser's wellbeing. We use mixed methods to understand responses to online sexual abuse-related disclosures on Reddit. We characterize disclosure responses, then investigate relationships between post content, comment content, and anonymity. We illustrate what types of support sought and provided in posts and comments co-occur. We find that posts seeking support receive more comments, and comments from "throwaway" (i.e., anonymous) accounts are more likely on posts also from throwaway accounts. Anonymous commenting enables commenters to share intimate content such as reciprocal disclosures and supportive messages, and commenter anonymity is not associated with aggressive or unsupportive comments. We argue that anonymity is an essential factor in designing social technologies that facilitate support seeking and provision in socially stigmatized contexts, and provide implications for social media site design. CAUTION: This article includes content about sexual abuse.
Metrics
Details
- Title
- Social Support, Reciprocity, and Anonymity in Responses to Sexual Abuse Disclosures on Social Media
- Creators
- Nazanin Andalibi - Drexel UniversityOliver L. Haimson - University of California, IrvineMunmun De Choudhury - Georgia Institute of TechnologyAndrea Forte - Drexel University
- Publication Details
- ACM transactions on computer-human interaction, v 25(5), pp 1-35
- Publisher
- Assoc Computing Machinery
- Number of pages
- 35
- Grant note
- 1253302 / NSF; National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Information Science
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000456616900004
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85058818545
- Other Identifier
- 991019169570004721
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
This publication has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:
InCites Highlights
Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Computer Science, Cybernetics
- Computer Science, Information Systems