Normative influences on thoughtful online participation
Abstract
We describe two experiments on whether individual thoughtful effort during online commenting is shaped by situational norms derived from the behavior of social others and the design of the environment, respectively. By measuring the length of participants' comments on a news website, the time taken to write them, and the number of issue-relevant thoughts they contain, we demonstrate that participants conform to high vs. low norms of thoughtfulness manifested through either the apparent behavior of other users or through visual, textual and interactional design features conceptually associated with thoughtfulness. Theoretical and applied insights for designing online participatory environments are discussed.
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News websites' users conform to informal standards set by others when writing comments, like length or number of covered aspects.
“Sukumaran et al. (2011) shows how news websites' users conform to informal standards set by others of when writing comments like length or number of covered aspects.”
From Social Data: Biases, Methodological Pitfalls, and Ethical Boundaries (2019) · cites this paper as Sukumaran et al., 2011
Cites
Social Influence: Compliance and Conformity
Cialdini, R. B., & Goldstein, N. J. (2004) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.142015 · Cited by 6,077 · see citing works
A Room with a Viewpoint: Using Social Norms to Motivate Environmental Conservation in Hotels
Goldstein, N. J., Cialdini, R. B., & Griskevicius, V. (2008) · Journal of Consumer Research · doi:10.1086/586910 · Cited by 3,235 · cited 1× · see citing works
“In an experiment that used normative messages to promote towel reuse in hotel rooms, Goldstein, Cialdini and Griskevicius [11] found that an appeal containing a descriptive norm (“75% of guests reuse”) resulted in more reuse behavior than a general appeal (“help save the environment”).”
BackgroundSocial psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication
Kiesler, S., Siegel, J., & McGuire, T. W. (1984) · American Psychologist · doi:10.1037/0003-066x.39.10.1123 · Cited by 2,630 · see citing works
Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market
Salganik, M. J., Dodds, P. S., & Watts, D. J. (2006) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1121066 · Cited by 2,219 · cited 1× · see citing works
“…and the low psychological salience (“social presence”) of others [12], several large empirical investigations in contexts such as music markets [32], news aggregators [20] and online video [38] show that people’s preferences for online content can be swayed dramatically by consensus…”
BackgroundNormative social influence is underdetected
Nolan, J. M., Schultz, P. W., Cialdini, R. B., Goldstein, N. J., & Griskevicius, V. (2008) · Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · doi:10.1177/0146167208316691 · Cited by 1,772 · see citing works
Tractinsky, N., Katz, A. S., & Ikar, D. (2000) · Interacting with Computers · doi:10.1016/s0953-5438(00)00031-x · Cited by 1,376 · see citing works
Liberman, V., Samuels, S. M., & Ross, L. (2004) · Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · doi:10.1177/0146167204264004 · Cited by 671 · cited 1× · see citing works
“A series of studies by Liberman, Samuels and Ross [21] used a variation of the prisoner’s dilemma game to show that individuals were much more apt to cooperate when the situation was labeled as the “Community Game” rather than the “Wall Street Game”.”
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Social Data: Biases, Methodological Pitfalls, and Ethical Boundaries
Olteanu, A., Castillo, C., Diaz, F., & Kıcıman, E. (2019) · Frontiers in Big Data · doi:10.3389/fdata.2019.00013 · Cited by 763 · see citing works
Understanding User Beliefs About Algorithmic Curation in the Facebook News Feed
Rader, E., & Gray, R. (2015) · Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/2702123.2702174 · Cited by 386 · see citing works
Crossmod: A Cross-Community Learning-based System to Assist Reddit Moderators
Chandrasekharan, E., Gandhi, C., Mustelier, M. W., & Gilbert, E. (2019) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3359276 · Cited by 151 · see citing works
Social Data: Biases, Methodological Pitfalls, and Ethical Boundaries
Olteanu, A., Castillo, C., Diaz, F., & Kiciman, E. (2016) · doi:10.2139/ssrn.2886526 · Cited by 763 · see citing works
Competing or aiming to be average?: normification as a means of engaging digital volunteers
Preist, C., Massung, E., & Coyle, D. (2014) · Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer supported cooperative work & social computing · doi:10.1145/2531602.2531615 · Cited by 65 · see citing works
How annotation styles influence content and preferences
Cheng, J., & Cosley, D. (2013) · Proceedings of the 24th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media · doi:10.1145/2481492.2481519 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
Examining Human-AI Collaboration for Co-Writing Constructive Comments Online
Shahid, F., Dittgen, M., Naaman, M., & Vashistha, A. (2025) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3757591 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
“They are usually longer in length and take longer to write [52, 90].”
Influential
- Authors
- Sukumaran, A., Vezich, S., McHugh, M., & Nass, C.
- Affiliations
- Stanford University (US)
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2011-05-07
- Pages
- 3401-3410
- OpenAlex
- W2037875487
- Cited by
- 105
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 6 · 2017: 14 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 3 · 2012: 8
- FWCI
- 4.77
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
- Social Sciences › Communication › Knowledge Management and Sharing
- Keywords
- social norms, normative influence, online commenting, environmental design, news websites, conformity
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