Paper Info
Title
A qualitative, network-centric method for modeling socio-technical systems, with applications to evaluating interventions on social media platforms to increase social equality
Abstract
We propose and extend a qualitative, complex systems methodology from cognitive engineering, known as the abstraction hierarchy, to model how potential interventions that could be carried out by social media platforms might impact social equality. Social media platforms have come under considerable ire for their role in perpetuating social inequality. However, there is also significant evidence that platforms can play a role in reducing social inequality, e.g. through the promotion of social movements. Platforms’ role in producing or reducing social inequality is, moreover, not static; platforms can and often do take actions targeted at positive change. How can we develop tools to help us determine whether or not a potential platform change might actually work to increase social equality? Here, we present the abstraction hierarchy as a tool to help answer this question. Our primary contributions are two-fold. First, methodologically, we extend existing research on the abstraction hierarchy in cognitive engineering with principles from Network Science. Second, substantively, we illustrate the utility of this approach by using it to assess the potential effectiveness of a set of interventions, proposed in prior work, for how online dating websites can help mitigate social inequality.
Year
DOI
Venue
2022
10.1007/s41109-022-00486-8
Applied Network Science
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Abstraction hierarchy, Social media and social inequality, Online dating, Qualitative network analysis
Journal
7
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
1
2364-8228
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
10
7
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Kenneth Joseph100.34
Huei-Yen Winnie Chen200.68
Stefania Ionescu300.34
Yuhao Du400.68
Pranav Sankhe500.34
Aniko Hannak61158.15
Atri Rudra700.34