Abstract
Developing a strong community requires empowered leadership capable of overcoming governance challenges. New online platforms have given users opportunities to practice governance through content moderation roles. The over 2.8 million “subreddit” communities on Reddit are governed by hundreds of thousands of volunteer moderators, many of whom have no training or prior experience in a governing role. While moderators often devote daily time to community maintenance and cope with the emotional effects of hate comments or disturbing content, Reddit provides no compensation for this position. Thus, moderators’ internal motivations and desire to continue filling this role is critical for their community. Drawing upon the relationship between governance procedures and internalized motivation, we investigate how the processes through which subreddit moderators generate community rules increase moderators’ motivation through the meeting of social-psychological needs: Procedural Justice and Self Determination, and Self-Other Merging. Preliminary analysis of survey data from 620 moderators across Reddit shows a correlation between moderators’ administrative behaviors and the social-psychological needs underpinning their motivations. Understanding these relationships will allow us to empower moderators to build engaging and cooperative online communities.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank research assistants Theresa Sims, Jesleyn Gill, Sharon Yoo, Katherine Coviello, Hannah Skepner, Samantha Vigil, Kabir Sahni, Anastacia Dobson Bell, Megan Tsang, Anna Beatrice Ricasata, Sean Abellera, Chengyue Jiang, Evan Brosnan, Yuqi Cheng, Nicole Calbreath, Abigail Endler, Nebiyat Walelign, Harneet Nagra, Alessandra Soto, Mark Murakami, Kelley Ann, Kexin Li, and Yakov Perlov for help with recruitment. Funding for this project was provided by the Provost’s Undergraduate Fellowship from the UC Davis Undergraduate Research Center.
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Wang, H.M., Bulat, B., Fujimoto, S., Frey, S. (2022). Governing for Free: Rule Process Effects on Reddit Moderator Motivations. In: Stephanidis, C., Antona, M., Ntoa, S., Salvendy, G. (eds) HCI International 2022 – Late Breaking Posters. HCII 2022. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1655. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-19682-9_14
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