Social media, online conversation

and cognitive neuroscience

Dr Fintan Nagle

fintan.nagle@nchlondon.ac.uk
 Social media

The largest study of personality and language use ever conducted [in 2013]
“All relationships presented in this work are at least significant at p < 0:001”

schwartz2013personality
Social media

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Motivation
History of online communciation
Social media

• Social networking sites are used in an everyday manner by over

a billion people worldwide.

• Social media use is increasing at three times the rate of other

Internet use.

inkster2016decade
IBM 7094s, which ran the world’s first online
conversation platform
Early communication systems

CDC Cyber 70, similar to the PLATO mainframe in 1975

Early communication systems

Talkomatic, 1973, running on PLATO

Early communication systems

An acoustic coupler phone modem, as

used to connect to early BBSs.
Forums and message boards
Integrating communication into websites

• Geocities (1994)
• Theglobe.com (1995)
• Tripod.com (1995)
The first generation of social media sites

• SixDegrees.com (1997)
• Friendster (2002)

• Myspace (2002)
• LinkedIn (2003)
• Bebo (2005)
The second generation of social media sites

• Facebook (2004)
• Twitter (2006)
• Instagram (2010)
• Snapchat (2011)
The modern social media ecosystem
Networks in 2016
Reddit
Reddit
Reddit
Twitter
Problems with Facebook

• Began as a website to compare the attractiveness of female

Harvard undergrads to that of farm animals
• Makes £15/year per user in ad revenue
• Has extensive data farming links with other organisations
• Uses an adaptive news feed algorithm to maximise screen
time
• Denied responsibility as a publisher (concerning fake news)
• Denied responsibility for political influence
• Offered targeted advertising to depressed teenagers
The effects of social media
on the mind and brain
New technologies

• The degree of novelty and stimulation provided by

the Web is seldom experienced elsewhere in
human activities.
Smartphone use

[Mason and Nielsen]

 Smartphone use

[clayson2012introduction]
 Task abandonment

krishnan2012video
 Note-taking and recall

• 67 participants made notes on five TED talks (c. 15 min)

using their usual note-taking strategy on either laptops
or paper.
• Two 5-min distractor tasks and a memory task were
performed.
• Factual recall questions, and conceptual application
questions (“How do Japan and Sweden differ in their
approaches to equality within their societies?”) were
asked.

mueller2014pen
 Note-taking and recall

mueller2014pen
 Note-taking and recall

mueller2014pen
 Note-taking and recall

Participants were instructed not to make verbatim notes:

mueller2014pen
Results from fMRI

moody2009your
Results from fMRI

moody2009your
Results from fMRI

moody2009your
Skimming

• Poor working memory capacity and poor attentional

control may be poorer at limiting the distraction
effect posed by the Web.

• The Cognitive Failures Questionnaire score was

correlated with the Problematic Mobile Phone Use
score and the Online Cognition Scale.

hadlington2015cognitive
Reading
• Investigated readers’ ability to form a cognitive map of the page

• “Generally speaking, printed books have fixed layouts; such text

presentation aids the formation of a physical map in readers’ minds
of where certain pieces of information are.

In contrast, screens typically make it difficult for readers to know the

location of information in the document, thereby impeding readers
in constructing an effective cognitive map.

For example, scrolling text on a screen prevents readers from

forming a coherent mental map, as there is no point for a reader to
remember that a piece of text was on the top of page, because
soon it might not be as the reader scrolls down the page”

hou2017reading
Recall vs location

sparrow2011cognitive
Habermas

Jürgen Habermas
A Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere – An Inquiry into a Category of
Bourgeois Society

There is a need for a public sphere in which educated individuals can congregate
and debate.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, this was fulfilled by the coffee shop (Britain) and
the salon (France).

A public sphere should

• Disregard status
• Share a domain of common concern
• Be inclusive

bernstein20114chan
Social media

Social media use is at its

highest ever, increasing
three times faster than
other Internet usage.

ryan2014uses
Social media

inkster2016decade
 Effects on attention

Fragmentation
 Effects on attention

Fragmentation
Effects on emotion

The chilling effect

The extended chilling effect

Facebook addiction

• Nearly half of users who leave

Facebook eventually return

baumer2015missing
Facebook addiction

Topic: withdrawal (first, felt, days, day, check)

Predicted regression

baumer2015missing
Facebook addiction

Topic: missed content

(friends, pictures, miss, photos, family)

Negatively predicted regression!

baumer2015missing
Facebook addiction

• Those reporting positive moods were less likely to revert than those reporting
negative moods
• Other social media were often used to announce departure from Facebook

baumer2015missing
Context collapse

• Context collapse:
The bringing together of multiple audiences into a single group

• Impression management:
Controlling one’s projected self-image based on perceived expectations
of the audience.

marder2016extended
The chilling effect

• The chilling effect:

Constrained expressive behaviour in the presence of surveillance.
Well researched in offline contexts (the workplace, prisons)

marder2016extended
The chilling effect

• The chilling effect:

Constrained expressive behaviour in the presence of surveillance.
Well researched in offline contexts (the workplace, prisons)
Also takes place online

• The extended chilling effect:

Does the online chilling effect extend into the real world?

marder2016extended
The chilling effect

• Negatively Directed Impression Management (NDIM)

• Researchers posed as market researchers

• NDIM score was composite of intention to take trip and

financial incentive required to take part

• Sample photos shown on either white background or

Facebook mockup (with information that participants
would have to add the researcher on Facebook and be
taggeD)

marder2016extended
The chilling
effect

marder2016extended
Social media and harassment

41% of Americans have been personally subjected to harassing

behavior online, and 66% have witnessed these behaviors
directed at others.

In a 2016 study performed in Belgium, 29% of adolescents had

experienced unwelcome sexual or gender-degrading comments.
In nearly half of cases reported to the social network, no action
was taken.
Social media and loneliness

Teenagers who visit social-networking sites every day but see their
friends in person less frequently are the most likely to agree with the
statements “A lot of times I feel lonely,” “I often feel left out of things,”
and “I often wish I had more good friends.”

13-14 year olds who are heavy users of social media increase their risk
of depression by 27%.
Social media and depression

Since 2012, rates of adolescent depression and suicide have

increased dramatically. What does this have to do with social
media?

Adolescents aged 13-14 who spend 10 or more hours a week on

social media are 56 percent more likely to say they’re unhappy
than those who devote less time.

Among 13-14 year olds, those who spend six to nine hours a
week on social media are still 47 percent more likely to say they
are unhappy than those who use social media even less.
Conclusions

The invididual psychological issues caused by social media are

numerous:

• Information addiction
• Social addiction
• Depression
• Body image issues

• Personality change: chilling

increase in harassing behaviour
context collapse
Information flow
in social media
Facebook - control of reading
Control of writing
Conversation hiding
Conversation hiding
Conversation hiding
Conversation hiding
The role of the publisher
 Message routing

Who decides who will read your message?

• You (one recipient) Letter

• You (group, selected at write time) Group message
• You (group, selected temporarily) Facebook post
• You (group, selected permanently) Forum / subreddit
• Algorithm
• Random Web browsing
• Receiver (group selected) Browsing a community
• Receiver (sender selected permanently) Facebook
• Receiver (sender selected temporarily) -
Continuua

• From anonymity to identity

• From private conversation to broadcast

• From ideas to people

• From challenge to confirmation

• From self-expression to persona construction

• From control to unwilling involvment

• From tool to product to hidden employer

 Social media,
fake news,
and political influence
Fake news

The World Economic Forum has listed digital misinformation

as one of the main threats to human society.
4Chan

• Formed in 2003 by Christopher Poole (15 at the time)

• 7 million unique monthly visitors (2012)

• Complete anonymity – no login required

bernstein20114chan
4Chan

bernstein20114chan
4Chan

“4chan is composed of young males obsessed with the Internet like Poole,
which significantly changes the quality of participation and how a public opinion
is formed.”

“looking at that picture of a lolcat does not feel like it provides much value.
Indeed, a er less than an hour looking at them online, one might eas-
ily become bored. ”

Poole:

“as awful as /b/ [4chan] can be, its lawless-seeming atmosphere has fostered
creativity. Sometimes it’s when people are hidden away, unconcerned about
their reputation or social identity, that they say and do very interesting things”

chen2012creation
4Chan

chen2012creation
Real-world interaction limits extremist material
Real-world interaction limits extremist material
Real-world interaction limits extremist material
Real-world interaction limits extremist material
Fake news

zanettou2017web
Fake news

zanettou2017web
Conclusions

• 4Chan acts as the “root” for news stories

• Twitter and Reddit users tend to post stories at around the same time
• For alternative news, Twitter and 4Chan are the most influential

zanettou2017web
delvicario2015spreading
delvicario2015spreading
Personality prediction

youyou2014computer
Personality prediction

youyou2014computer
Political influence
Political influence
Conclusions

• Users usually select content related to a specific narrative

and ignore the rest
• Social homogeneity is the primary driver of content
diffusion
• Homogenous, highly polarised clusters often form

• Targeted advertising can influence political behaviour:

Results on this have just emerged
What are we going
to do about this?
Design principles

• Control
• Tool, not product (especially not employer)

bernstein20114chan
Design principles

Control of reading

When reading, the user should be able to control what they see:

• What people they read conversations from

• What groups they read conversations from
• What order they see conversations in
Design principles

The conversation is important

The unit of browsing is the conversation.

Design principles

Interactions should be centered around the

conversation

The conversation is a central concept.

All communication happens within a conversation, which provides

• Context
(working against context collapse)
• Knowlege of one’s audience
• Ownership
 Design principles

Conversations
should be hierarchical,
not linear
Design principles

Control of writing

When reading, the user should be able to control who sees what
they write:

• The entire Web?

• Only users with accounts?
• Only particular groups of users
• Only particular users
Design principles

Control of UI and appearance

The user should be able to customise elements of the interface:

• Fonts and colours

• Layout: column width, etc
• Interaction behaviour (notifications)
Design principles

Groups are central – and private

It should be easy to establish groups of contacts and to use these

in interactions:

• Creating a conversation with a particular group

• Reading conversations from particular groups
Design principles

Public groups are toxic

It has been repeatedly shown that public groups, whether

• Forums
• Subforums
• Subreddits
• Hashtags

encourage nonconstructive behaviour, such as

• Harassment
• Verbal abuse
Design principles

Conversations need an owner

The user is normally absolved of responsibility for their writing.

Responsibility usually lies with

• The reader
(“You didn’t have to look there...)

• The moderator

• The website operator

Design principles

Lyra: an open, nonprofit conversation platform

Lyra

• Highly-motivated team of 5

• Full-featured user interface

complete

• Sustainable in terms of
subscription percentage
(if at larger scale)
The competition
Kialo
The competition
gab.ai
Conclusions

• Even basic use of computer technology brings big changes in

cognition, memory and recall.

• Social networks are a central part of engaged, online life

• In the Internet age, they play for society the role of an individual’s
attention system.

• Our interactions with social media need to be carefully managed.

• We need responsible, open communication tools which have our

best interests at heart.