Emotionally Aware Moderation: The Potential of Emotion Monitoring in Shaping Healthier Social Media Conversations

TL;DR

This paper explores emotion monitoring dashboards in social media moderation, demonstrating their potential to increase emotional awareness and reduce hate speech, while also highlighting possible unintended emotional consequences.

Contribution

It introduces and evaluates two emotion monitoring tools that enhance moderation strategies by fostering emotional awareness and reducing harmful comments.

Findings

Emotion monitoring dashboards increase emotional awareness.

They effectively reduce hate speech.

Potential for increased negative emotions when discussing sensitive topics.

Abstract

Social media platforms increasingly employ proactive moderation techniques, such as detecting and curbing toxic and uncivil comments, to prevent the spread of harmful content. Despite these efforts, such approaches are often criticized for creating a climate of censorship and failing to address the underlying causes of uncivil behavior. Our work makes both theoretical and practical contributions by proposing and evaluating two types of emotion monitoring dashboards to users' emotional awareness and mitigate hate speech. In a study involving 211 participants, we evaluate the effects of the two mechanisms on user commenting behavior and emotional experiences. The results reveal that these interventions effectively increase users' awareness of their emotional states and reduce hate speech. However, our findings also indicate potential unintended effects, including increased expression of negative emotions (Angry, Fear, and Sad) when discussing sensitive issues. These insights provide a basis for further research on integrating proactive emotion regulation tools into social media platforms to foster healthier digital interactions.