HomeArticles Posted by Jessie Taft

Social Media TestDrive: Social Media for Education

Social Media TestDrive is an interactive educational program developed by the SML, in partnership with Common Sense Education, that offers a number of modules about key digital citizenship topics, such as managing privacy settings, smart self-presentation, upstanding to cyberbullying, and news literacy. Each Social Media TestDrive module teaches a set of digital citizenship concepts and allows youth to practice and reflect upon what they have learned using a simulated social media experience within a safe and protected platform.

In August 2019, Social Media TestDrive underwent a nationwide launch alongside Common Sense Education’s new Digital Citizenship curriculum. Currently, 9 Social Media TestDrive modules are linked as extension activities to the corresponding Common Sense Education Digital Citizenship lessons and are freely available to the public. As of September 2022, over 630,000 people have used the tool. You can read more about our most recent updates to the Social Media TestDrive curriculum here.

In Spring 2020, the team was awarded a $300,000 NSF Early-concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) grant from the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace program, titled Addressing Social Media-Related Cybersecurity and Privacy Risks with Experiential Learning Interventions. This grant will support research to identify and create targeted interventions for subgroups of middle school youth that face higher privacy risks online. Another goal of this research is to extend the reach of Social Media TestDrive to a population it was not originally designed for, older adults. To do this, we will use an inclusive privacy-based approach to identify needs and concerns specific to older adults, and then develop and evaluate an intervention suited to their needs.

Starting in Fall 2020, the team will start conducting a multisite outcome evaluation of the Social Media TestDrive platform, using surveys, focus groups, and one-on-one interviews. This outcome evaluation research is a critical next step for understanding and improving the effectiveness of Social Media TestDrive in how it affects digital literacy knowledge, attitudes, skills, and behaviors. This research will be conducted in collaboration with our community partners, New York State 4-H and Cornell PRYDE.

For more information and access to the Social Media TestDrive modules, please visit https://socialmediatestdrive.org/.

 

DiFranzo, D., Choi, Y.H., Purington, A., Taft, J.G., Whitlock, J., Bazarova, N.N. (2019). Social Media TestDrive: Real-World Social Media Education for the Next Generation. In Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’19). Glasgow, UK.

Making Social Media a Positive Experience for Young Users (March 26, 2020), Psychology Today.

Test-Drive Social Media for Digital Citizenship (August 19, 2019), Psychology Today.

Intervening to Stop Cyberbullying

To date, we have completed a series of studies investigating cyberbullying and bystander interventions. The goal of this research is to investigate bystander interventions online, and the ways in which interventions can be encouraged in cyberbullying situations. 

One study, led by former SML post-doc Dominc DiFranzo, explored the effects of  design on bystander intervention using a total social media simulation (Truman). Depending on the experimental condition, participants were given varying information regarding audience size and viewing notifications, intended to increase the sense of personal responsibility in bystanders. Results from this study indicate that design changes that increased the participants’ feelings of accountability prompted them to accept personal responsibility in instances of cyberbullying. 

Another study, led by recent PhD Sam Taylor, examined the role of empathy and accountability in bystander intervention. In this study, design interventions were developed that aimed to increase accountability and empathy among bystanders. The results indicate that both accountability and empathy predicted bystander intervention, but the types of bystander actions promoted by each mechanism differed.

A different study, led by former PhD student Franccesca Kazerooni, investigated how different forms of cyberbullying repetition influenced the appraisal of instances of cyberbullying, and the bystanders’ willingness to intervene. This study found that increasing the number of aggressors on Twitter does increase the likelihood of each stage of the bystander intervention model, but only under certain conditions.

 

Taylor, S., DiFranzo, D., Choi, Y. H., Sannon, S., and Bazarova, N. (2019). Accountability and Empathy by Design: Encouraging Bystander Intervention to Cyberbullying on Social Media. Proceedings of the ACM on Human Computer Interaction Journal (PACM CHI Journal), 3, 1-26.

DiFranzo, D., Taylor, S. H., Kazerooni, F., Wherry, O. D., & Bazarova, N. N. (2018). Upstanding by Design: Bystander intervention in cyberbullying. In Proceedings of the 2018 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’18).

Kazerooni, F., Taylor, S. H., Bazarova, N. N., & Whitlock, J. L. (2018). Cyberbullying bystander intervention: The number of offenders and retweeting predict likelihood of helping a cyberbullying victim. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 23(3), 146-162.

Communication, Technology, & Relationships

Communication technologies, such as text messaging, social media, and phone calls, are used to maintain relationships of all types, but what impact does this technology have on well-being? How are intimate relationships of couples being transformed by the capabilities allowed by these new communication methods?

One study, led by recent PhD Samuel Taylor, builds on media multiplexity theory to investigate the media ecosystem used for communication in close relationships. While being always available adds security, knowing that it is possible to reach out and connect with loved ones at any moment, it also adds the stress of maintaining constant availability. A dyadic longitudinal study of cohabitating romantic partners revealed that media multiplexity was associated with the perception that a partner is always available to help, which predicted increased well-being. 

Another project currently in progress is called ‘Parenting Practices in the Digital Age’. This project aims to understand how parents create and enforce technology-related rules in their homes, and how teenagers perceive and respond to those rules.

 

Taylor, S. H., & Bazarova, N. N. (2020).  Always available, always attached: A relational perspective on the effects of mobile phones and social media on subjective well-being. To be presented at the 70th Annual International Communication Association Conference, Gold Cost, Australia.

Taylor, S. H., & Bazarova, N. N. (2018). Social media and subjective well-being: A relational perspective. In Z. Papacharissi (Ed). A Networked Self and Love (pp. 86-112). New York, NY: Routledge.

Taylor, S. H., & Bazarova, N. N. (2017). Media multiplexity in romantic relationships: A longitudinal test of relational closeness, relational uncertainty, and multimedia communication. Presented at the 67th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, May 25-29, 2017, San Diego, CA.

Taylor, S. H., & Bazarova, N. N. (2016). The Interaction between relational uncertainty and media affordances: An investigation of date request messages across different interpersonal media. Presented at the 2016 Conference for the International Association of Relationship Research, July 20-24, 2016, Toronto, CA.

Mental Health and Technology

This area examines a connection between mental health and communication in social media and other technologies. 

Many people go online for information and support on mental health concerns. Led by the recent PhD graduate Kaylee Kruzan, this project explores how a population that is usually difficult to engage in treatment (individuals who self-injure) exchanges information and support on self-injury through Talklife, an online peer-to-peer support application. This application, developed by clinicians and researchers, allows users to safely share their experiences with different things such as depression, anxiety, and self-harm, and receive support from the community. In this project we aim to (1) describe behavioral and linguistic patterns of users, (2) explore peer support patterns to assess the interaction between solicitation and response, and (3) we examine the relationship between online behaviors and self-injury over the course of two months. 

In another project, we examined how to help people with anxiety and non-suicidal self-injury better manage their well-being. Virtual reality (VR) technology has a lot of potential to be useful in a variety of different communication and health contexts, from raising awareness about environmental issues, to assisting with perspective-taking, to helping people with PTSD. But there’s still a lot that’s not understood about how we respond to being transported into these virtual environments, especially around how we sense our bodies when we can’t actually see them. This study, done in collaboration with the Virtual Embodiment Lab, tests a few different methods to help people manage anxiety by transforming their bodies and their environments in VR (to be presented at CHI’2020). 

 

Kruzan, K., Whitlock, J., Bazarova, N.N., Miller, K., Chapman, J., & Won, A.S. (2020) Supporting self-injury recovery: The potential for virtual reality intervention. Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems. ACM.

Chang, P. F., Bazarova, N. N., & Whitlock, J.L (2016). To respond or not to respond, that is the question: The decision making process of providing social support do distressed posters. Presented at the 2016 Society for Research on Adolescents Biennial Meeting, March 31-April 2, 2016, Baltimore, MD.

Technology and Privacy

This area of research investigates the privacy implications of digital technologies, including how privacy issues influence user behavior and how people protect themselves from risks online.
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Past Project: Online Disclosure, Support, & Well-Being

Self-disclosure is a huge part of how we communicate on social networking sites. This series of studies looks at how and why people disclose on social media. (more…)

Past Project: Health and Digital Communication

There are still a lot of un-answered questions about how online communication can influence health, and how social technologies can be used to improve health and well-being. (more…)