When all you have is a banhammer : the social and communicative work of Volunteer moderators
Author(s)
Lo, Claudia (Claudia Wai Yu)![Thumbnail](/bitstream/handle/1721.1/117903/1051218407-MIT.pdf.jpg?sequence=3&isAllowed=y)
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Other Contributors
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Humanities.
Advisor
T. L. Taylor.
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Show full item recordAbstract
The popular understanding of moderation online is that moderation is inherently reactive, where moderators see and then react to content generated by users, typically by removing it; in order to understand the work already being performed by moderators, we need to expand our understanding of what that work entails. Drawing upon interviews, participant observation, and my own experiences as a volunteer community moderator on Reddit, I propose that a significant portion of work performed by volunteer moderators is social and communicative in nature. Even the chosen case studies of large-scale esports events on Twitch, where the most visible and intense tasks given to volunteer moderators consists of reacting and removing user-generated chat messages, exposes faults in the reactive model of moderation. A better appreciation of the full scope of moderation work will be vital in guiding future research, design, and development efforts in this field.
Description
Thesis: S.M. in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing, 2018. Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references (pages 85-86).
Date issued
2018Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Comparative Media Studies/WritingPublisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Keywords
Comparative Media Studies., Humanities.