Promoting civil discourse on social media using nudges: A tournament of seven interventions

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2024-10-10 22:00:11

Tatiana Celadin, Folco Panizza, Valerio Capraro, Promoting civil discourse on social media using nudges: A tournament of seven interventions, PNAS Nexus, Volume 3, Issue 10, October 2024, pgae380, https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgae380

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 (N = 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.

The spread of harmful content on social media, such as hate speech, has emerged as a pressing issue in contemporary society ( 1, 2). Typically directed at individuals based on characteristics such as ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, social class, and physical appearance ( 3), hate speech and other forms of violent online expression can have severe consequences on the well-being of individuals, even if perpetrated by a minority of users ( 4). They can contribute to mental health issues, generating anxiety and fear ( 5, 6), and leading to social isolation ( 7), and can fuel discrimination and prejudice ( 8), thereby contributing to wider social divisions and conflicts ( 9). As also highlighted by the United Nations, it is of critical importance to identify interventions that can promote civil discourse and create safe spaces where users can express their ideas without fear of discrimination or harm ( 10).