Exploring Intervention Techniques to Alleviate Negative Emotions during Video Content Moderation Tasks as a Worker-centered Task Design

Videos are dynamic and multi-modal compared to other types of content, making automatic filtering difficult, which is why content moderators play a crucial role. However, video content moderators are exposed to more profound emotional labor because videos contain rich visual information, sometimes including even harmful content, such as violent or terrifying scenes. In this work, we explore the effect of six intervention techniques on alleviating negative emotions during video content moderation tasks. We conducted one online crowdsourcing experiment and two controlled user studies to find out that (a) interleaving with positive videos or (b) cartoonization could significantly reduce negative emotions in the moderators. Participants reported that the advantages of these approaches are in helping reduce negative emotions at the time of moderation while existing approaches focus on post-task activities (e.g., relaxation or getting a hobby). We discuss the applicability of our findings to broader tasks, including improvement in intervention techniques.