Understanding international perceptions of the severity of harmful content online
Open accessAbstract
Online social media platforms constantly struggle with harmful content such as misinformation and violence, but how to effectively moderate and prioritize such content for billions of global users with different backgrounds and values presents a challenge. Through an international survey with 1,696 internet users across 8 different countries across the world, this empirical study examines how international users perceive harmful content online and the similarities and differences in their perceptions. We found that across countries, the perceived severity consistently followed an exponential growth as the harmful content became more severe, but what harmful content were perceived as more or less severe varied significantly. Our results challenge platform content moderation’s status quo of using a one-size-fits-all approach to govern international users, and provide guidance on how platforms may wish to prioritize and customize their moderation of harmful content.
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Social media platforms struggle to grapple with differences in perceptions of appropriate speech among transnational users.
“struggle to grapple with differences in perceptions of appropriate speech among transnational users (Jiang et al., 2021).”
From Stuck in the middleware with you: the challenges of capitalizing a market-oriented approach to platform governance (2025) · cites this paper as Jiang et al., 2021
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References 33 · Cited by 69
- Authors
- Jiang, J. A., Scheuerman, M. K., Fiesler, C., & Brubaker, J. R.
- Affiliations
- University of Colorado Boulder (US)
- Corresponding author
- Jiang, Jialun Aaron
- Venue
- PLOS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2021-08-27
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- e0256762
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC8396792
- OpenAlex
- W3196190653
- Cited by
- 69
- References
- 33
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 15.59
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- CU Scholar (University of Colorado Boulder) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection
- Social Sciences › Law › Freedom of Expression and Defamation
- Keywords
- perceived severity, content moderation, cross-cultural comparison, misinformation, online violence, social networking sites, international users
- MeSH terms
- Antisocial Personality Disorder, Cannabis, Child, Child Abuse, Child, Preschool, Communication, Female, Humans, Male, Surveys and Questionnaires, Violence, Internet, Principal Component Analysis, Social Media
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