How Users Experience Moderation?: A Systematic Literature Review

Researchers across various fields have investigated how users experience moderation with different perspectives and methodologies. At present, there is a pressing need to synthesize and extract key insights from prior literature in order to formulate a systematic understanding of what constitutes a moderation experience and to explore how such understanding could further moderation-related research and practice. To answer this question, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) to identify and analyze 42 empirical articles published between January 2016 and March 2022. We describe these studies’ characteristics, characterize user experiences with moderation systems, and identify primary perspectives to conceptualize moderation experience. These findings suggest an expansive scope of research interests in understanding moderation experiences and considering moderated users as an important stakeholder group to reflect on current moderation design but also pertain to the dominance of the punitive, solutionist logic in moderation and ample implications for future moderation research, design, and practice.