"It's common and a part of being a content creator": Understanding How Creators Experience and Cope With Hate and Harassment Online

Document Title

“It’s common and a part of being a content creator”: Understanding How Creators Experience and Cope with Hate and Harassment Online

Document Information

• Topic Area: Experiences and coping strategies of social media creators facing online hate and harassment
• Keywords: online safety, privacy, hate, harassment, content creators, content moderation, psychological support

Research Background and Issues

• Problems or Challenges:

  1. While social media provides creators with public attention and economic benefits, it also exposes them to higher risks of online hate and harassment.
  2. Hate behaviors take various forms, including harmful comments, impersonation, stalking, account hijacking, etc., which can impact creators' mental health and career stability.
  3. Tools provided by platforms (such as moderation tools and reporting functions) lack efficiency and transparency, failing to adequately protect creators.

• Significance: Hate and harassment pose serious threats to the safety and mental health of social media creators, potentially leading to self-censorship or abandonment of content creation, which negatively affects public discourse and the diversity of online communities.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:

  1. Existing studies primarily focus on online harassment issues faced by general internet users, with a lack of comprehensive research specifically targeting social media creators.
  2. Exploring creators' own coping strategies and attitudes toward platform tools can better guide future technological designs.

Solution

• Research Methods:

  1. Conducting a survey of 135 U.S.-based social media creators to gain insights into their experiences and coping strategies regarding hate and harassment.
  2. The survey covers creators' concerns, actual attacks they faced, attack types and frequencies, their evaluations of platform tools, and their suggestions for improvement.

• Innovative Aspects: This study is the first systematic investigation into the scope of hate and harassment attacks faced by creators, exploring shortcomings of existing solutions and directions for improvement.

• Implementation Steps:

  1. Designing a survey questionnaire covering attack types experienced by creators (e.g., impersonation, personal information leaks), satisfaction with tools, and coping strategies.
  2. Collecting creators' open-ended narratives to understand personal experiences and opinions on current tools.
  3. Using statistical modeling to analyze how factors such as gender, age, and audience size correlate with attack probabilities.

Research Findings

• Key Findings:

  1. Prevalence of Hate and Harassment: 95% of creators have experienced at least one instance of hate or harassment, with 36% stating these attacks are routine.
  2. Unfair Targeting of Creators: Female creators face significantly higher risks of sexual harassment (17.7 times) and stalking (4 times), while creators with larger audiences are more likely to encounter extortion, information leaks, and rumor attacks.
  3. Coping Strategies:
     • 82% of creators found content moderation tools “helpful,” but satisfaction with reporting functions was the lowest (only 55% approval), due to lack of transparency and follow-up.
     • Creators rely on personal keyword blocking lists and support from friends/family to alleviate psychological stress.

• Comparison with Existing Solutions: This study highlights deficiencies in current tools: for example, automated content moderation is prone to errors, inter-platform support lacks consistency, and reporting systems fail to track outcomes effectively.

• Recommendations and Directions for Improvement:

  1. Enhancing content moderation tools, including pre-configured keyword blocking and stricter restrictions on anonymous and low-quality accounts.
  2. Developing transparent and efficient reporting tracking systems.
  3. Building supportive communities and increasing visibility of mental health resources.
  4. Establishing comprehensive guidelines to help creators better manage their privacy.

• Experimental or Evaluation Results: The survey and statistical analysis confirmed the following trends: - Audience size and exposure level directly influence the likelihood of creators experiencing attacks. - Gender and age of creators show significant differences in attack frequency. - The cross-platform nature of hate and harassment requires more collaborative response mechanisms.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  1. The sample is limited to the U.S. and includes only current creators, potentially underestimating more severe experiences.
  2. Expanding to multicultural contexts is desired to explore differences across countries and regions.
  3. Future research could integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning to more effectively identify and mitigate risks of hate attacks.