Celadin Tatiana, Panizza Folco, Capraro Valerio
Department of Economics, University Ca' Foscari of Venice, San Giobbe, Venice 30121, Italy.
Molecular Mind Laboratory, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Lucca 55100, Italy.
PNAS Nexus. 2024 Oct 1;3(10):pgae380. doi: 10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae380. eCollection 2024 Oct.
In this article, we test and compare several message-based nudges designed to promote civil discourse and reduce the circulation of harmful content such as hate speech. We conducted a large pre-registered experiment ( = 4,081) to measure the effectiveness of seven nudges: making descriptive norms, injunctive norms, or personal norms salient, cooling down negative emotions, stimulating deliberation or empathy, and highlighting reputation. We used an online platform that reproduces a social media newsfeed and presented the nudge as a message when entering the platform. Our findings indicate that none of the nudges significantly impacts participants' engagement with harmful content. At the same time, nudges making descriptive norms salient selectively increase participants' overall engagement with relatively harmless content. Additionally, making injunctive norms salient increased the likelihood of liking harmless posts. Exploratory text analysis also reveals that highlighting reputation leads to more substantial and coherent comments on harmful posts. These results suggest that nudges that activate norm considerations represent a promising approach to promoting civil discourse and making social media a safer and more inclusive space for all.
在本文中，我们测试并比较了几种基于信息的助推措施，这些措施旨在促进文明话语，减少仇恨言论等有害内容的传播。我们进行了一项大规模的预注册实验（n = 4,081），以衡量七种助推措施的有效性：使描述性规范、禁令性规范或个人规范凸显，冷却负面情绪，激发思考或同理心，以及突出声誉。我们使用了一个再现社交媒体新闻源的在线平台，并在进入平台时将助推信息作为一条消息呈现。我们的研究结果表明，没有一种助推措施能显著影响参与者对有害内容的参与度。与此同时，使描述性规范凸显的助推措施有选择地增加了参与者对相对无害内容的总体参与度。此外，使禁令性规范凸显增加了点赞无害帖子的可能性。探索性文本分析还表明，突出声誉会导致对有害帖子有更充实、连贯的评论。这些结果表明，激活规范考量的助推措施是促进文明话语、使社交媒体成为所有人更安全、更包容空间的一种有前景的方法。
