Negotiating Sociotechnical Boundaries: Moderation Work to Counter Racist Attacks in Online Communities

Title of the Paper

"Negotiating Sociotechnical Boundaries: Moderation Work to Counter Racist Attacks in Online Communities"

Bibliographic Information

• Research Domain: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), online community governance, diversity and anti-discrimination
• Keywords: boundaries, content moderation, platformized racism, new racism, Reddit, crime, symbolic boundaries, trace ethnography

Research Background and Questions

• Background: Online communities ostensibly provide platforms for open communication among users, but they can also become breeding grounds for racist discourse. Communities (subreddits) on Reddit often have explicit anti-racism policies, yet racist attacks persist, threatening the cultural identity and cohesion of these spaces.
• Key Questions: How can racist attacks be countered in online communities? How does content moderation help maintain community boundaries? How can the sociological concept of "boundaries" be applied to online community governance?
• Motivation: To explore how racist attacks disrupt community boundaries in online spaces and to investigate how moderation work adapts and counters these attacks through the maintenance of symbolic boundaries.

Proposed Solution

• Solution: Drawing on symbolic boundary theory, the study examines crime discussion subreddits on Reddit (r/baltimore and r/chicago) to analyze types of racist attacks and how moderation work responds through community boundary maintenance.
• Innovations:
  • Extending symbolic boundary theory to the study of online communities.
  • Introducing trace ethnography to observe the dynamics of Reddit discourse and user behavior.
  • Categorizing community boundaries into three types: institutional boundaries, cultural boundaries, and geographic boundaries.
• Implementation Steps and Techniques:
  1. Data Collection: Using the Reddit API to filter keywords and extract relevant crime discussion posts and comments from 2018 to 2019.
  2. Data Analysis: Employing inductive and deductive coding methods alongside trace ethnography to uncover patterns of community interaction and racist attacks.
  3. Classification and Summary: Defining categories of racist attacks and strategies for boundary maintenance through moderation work.

Research Findings

• Types of Racist Attacks and Boundary Construction:
  • Attack Types: Race-baiting posts, covert racism, racist brigading.
  • Boundary Measures: Institutional boundaries enforce rules against racist discourse; cultural boundaries involve user-established anti-racism norms; geographic boundaries use technical tools (e.g., "virtual geofencing") to block external interference.
• Specific Findings:
  • Identified how covert and overt racist discourse disrupt symbolic boundaries in r/baltimore and r/chicago.
  • Clarified three strategies for boundary maintenance through moderation: locking controversial posts, defining racial norms within cultural contexts, and defending against racist brigading.
  • Through trace ethnography, revealed how moderation work dynamically adapts to emerging forms of racist attacks.
• Experimental or Evaluation Results:
  • Over 25% of posts were found to induce racist comments.
  • Certain moderation strategies, such as post locking and user flagging tools, proved effective in curbing the spread of racist discourse.
  • Covert racism (e.g., comments involving racial stereotypes) was often more challenging to identify and suppress.
• Limitations and Future Directions:
  • Data Limitations: The study focused on two subreddits with a limited sample set and did not account for deleted content.
  • Future Research Directions: Designing more sophisticated community boundary mechanisms, exploring boundary maintenance in other types of online communities, and further applying symbolic boundary theory to community governance.

Conclusion

This study provides an in-depth analysis of racist attacks and moderation work in online communities, proposing strategies based on symbolic boundary maintenance to offer new perspectives for anti-discrimination governance. Future research could expand the application of these theories and methods to more online platforms and community types, while emphasizing the integration of technical tools and policy design to help marginalized groups maintain safety and equality in digital spaces.