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Background
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter are a popular feature of modern life which enable users to share content with others around the world. The increasing popularity of social media brings many benefits but also risks such as ‘digital wildfires’ in which provocative content spreads rapidly and can cause serious harm. This provocative content may take the form of a rumour, false information, hate speech, or a malicious campaign against others. When it spreads rapidly it can damage the reputation and well-being of individuals, groups and entire communities. The prevalence of digital wildfires in modern life has led to questions over how they – and the harms they cause - can be managed, prevented and limited. There is some scope for intervention through the law and the actions of social media companies. In addition there are opportunities for social media users to influence the posting and spread of content by monitoring their own online behaviours and the behaviours of others.
Our project objectives are to:
Describe and analyse the communicative affordances of social media compared to traditional ones. This includes understanding the ways in which different stakeholders engaged online interpret these affordances, and design their conduct accordingly.
Describe and analyse the temporal structures of (mis)information flows in social media. This focus includes actual (historical) and potential (looming, averted) digital wildfires.
Understand and conceptualize the relationship between online and offline practices and harm (content going ‘viral’ on and offline, back and forth).
Identify the presence and limitations of self-regulation in relation to acid tests of open digital communication and, therefore, the necessity for official intervention to reduce any harmful consequences of this communication.
Develop an ethical security map based on a mixed-methods approach (e.g. a ‘policy Delphi’, ethnographic fieldwork) employed for identifying and comparing different stakeholders’ perspectives on, and practical experiences with governing social media.
Complement this ethical security map with a range of outputs for broader impact, such as, a reflection and training module on digital wildfire for schools, and interdisciplinary training modules with computational techniques to analyse social media and ‘big data’.
Advance theories and methods for tackling ‘big data’ questions across the social sciences and computer science; establish the concept of self-governance, and an understanding of its empirical contexts, in the growing research and policy field of responsible innovation (RI).
In order to meet these objectives, we are conducting a range of workpackages:
Workpackage one: Scoping ethical and regulatory questions in relation to digital wildfires. We will review existing governance mechanisms relevant to digital wildfires on social media and assess their strengths and weaknesses.
Workpackage two: Case studies of four digital wildfires. We will collect four digital social media datasets that exemplify the qualities of digital wildfires –in the form of misleading or provocative information spread rapidly over a short period of time. We will analyse these datasets using the COSMOS computational toolset and in-depth qualitative approaches to examine information flows during digital wildfires and the occurrence of self-regulatory behaviour, such as counter speech to combat rumour or hate speech.
Workpackage three: Policy Delphi. We will conduct a series of online questionnaires to seek the informed opinion of experts from the fields of science, commerce, administration, and law and civil society regarding the appropriate regulation of digital social media and digital wildfires.
Workpackage four: Governance practices observed. We will conduct interviews and observations at various sites (social media platforms, police organisations, civil rights groups, etc.) to investigate and understand how stakeholders respond to instances where the digital spread of misleading and/or provocative content may create situations of offline tension, conflict or disturbance.
Workpackage five: Ethical security map. We will draw on the results of our various project activities to produce an ethical security map that state agencies and NGOs can use as a practical guide to navigate through social media policy.
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