FollowBias
Name
FollowBias_CSCW_2017-Matias-Szalavitz-Zuckerman.preprint.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
985.41 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
c50f9c065e01a583c043f0a7ec3b2f52
Author(s)
Matias, Jorge Nathan
Szalavitz, Sarah
Zuckerman, Ethan
Alternative Title
Supporting Behavior Change toward Gender Equality by Networked Gatekeepers on Social Media
Date Issued
February 2017
Journal
Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
Publisher
ACM Press
Citation
Matias, J. Nathan et al. "Supporting Behavior Change toward Gender Equality by Networked Gatekeepers on Social Media." Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, February 2017, Portland, Oregon, USA, ACM Press, February 2017 © 2017 ACM
Version
Original manuscript
Abstract
Networked gatekeepers on social media increasingly influence which people and groups receive media attention. Many unknowingly direct much greater attention to men than to women. Can technologies support these gatekeepers to follow their own values of equality? Theories of value consistency suggest that confronting people with inconsistencies between values and behavior can prompt behavior change. In this paper, we introduce FollowBias, a novel system that offers feedback on the percentage of women that users follow on Twitter. We conduct field deployments of FollowBias with 61 and 78 participants, exploring differences between their values and behavior, their explanations of those differences, and their changes in behavior. In the first, FollowBias users had a 45 percentage point greater chance of increasing the percentage of women followed over one week. In the second, we fail to find an effect. We also offer findings on political and ethical trade-offs in designing systems for behavior change toward equality.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Civic Media
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1145/2998181.2998287
