Online communities, such as Facebook groups, Reddit subreddits, Discord or Slack spaces,
and more play a vital role for millions of people worldwide, helping them connect to people,
information, and engage in deliberation. Unlike the social networking sites that have site-wide
rules that apply across the entire platform and to the entire body of users, online communities have their own rules and norms. The are (r)enforced by volunteer administrators, design features (such as voting
systems), and community members themselves. These rules and norms shape why and in what
capacity community members participate.
However, as recommender systems powered by AI have become basic infrastructure, the interplay between humans and algorithms has led to outcomes that scientists and community leaders have struggled to explain (Matias, 2023). In online communities, recommender systems determine what information we see and who we interact with. We are working in collaboration with leaders of online communities on the platform Reddit to understand more about the impact of AI, such as recommender systems, on communities. Through a survey, records of behavioural data, and donated logs of administrative actions, we will explore how people who are recommended a particular community engage with it, particularly how it affects their normative expectations and participation behavior.
This study has been approved by Cornell’s Institutional Review Board, IRB0149466.
About the study
- Pre-registration
- We have registered the study on Open Science Framework. This is where you can view the items we will measure in the survey and the statistical tests we will run.
- Survey
- This Google Doc is the basic survey we distributed to participating communities.
Community Reports
We’re sharing preliminary results with participating communities. See the links below to read the reports.
- r/AskHistorians: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1sm6lhx/askhistorians_community_survey_results/
- r/AmItheAsshole: