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'Walking Into a Fire Hoping You Don't Catch': Strategies and Designs to Facilitate Cross-Partisan Online Discussions

Published: 18 October 2021 Publication History

Abstract

While cross-partisan conversations are central to a vibrant deliberative democracy, these conversations are hard to have, especially amidst unprecedented levels of partisan animosity we observe today. We report on a qualitative study of 17 US residents who engage with outpartisans on Reddit to understand what they look for in these interactions, and the strategies they adopt. We find that users have multiple, sometimes contradictory expectations of these conversations, ranging from deliberative discussions to entertainment and banter. In aiming to foster 'good' cross-partisan discussions, users make strategic choices on which subreddits to participate in, who to engage with and how to talk to outpartisans, often establishing common ground, complimenting, and remaining dispassionate in their interactions. Further, contrary to offline settings where knowing more about outpartisan interlocutors help manage disagreements, on Reddit, users look to actively learn as little as possible about them for fear that such information may bias their interactions. However, through design probes, we find that users are actually open to knowing certain kinds of information about their interlocutors, such as non-political subreddits that they both participate in, and to having that information made visible to their interlocutors. However, making other information visible, such as the other subreddits that they participate in or their past comments, though potentially humanizing, raises concerns around privacy and misuse of that information for personal attacks especially among women and minority groups. Finally, we identify important challenges and opportunities in designing to improve online cross-partisan interactions in today's hyper-polarized environment.

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  1. 'Walking Into a Fire Hoping You Don't Catch': Strategies and Designs to Facilitate Cross-Partisan Online Discussions

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      cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
      Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction  Volume 5, Issue CSCW2
      CSCW2
      October 2021
      5376 pages
      EISSN:2573-0142
      DOI:10.1145/3493286
      Issue’s Table of Contents
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      Published: 18 October 2021
      Published in PACMHCI Volume 5, Issue CSCW2

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      1. affective polarization
      2. partisanship
      3. political discussions
      4. social media

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      • (2024)A Comparative Analysis of Centralized and Decentralized Developer Autonomous Organizations Managing Conflicts in Discussing External CrisesIEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems10.1109/TCSS.2023.324746411:6(8118-8129)Online publication date: Dec-2024
      • (2023)GuesSync!: An Online Casual Game To Reduce Affective PolarizationProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36101907:CSCW2(1-33)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
      • (2022)SIG on Designing for Constructive ConflictExtended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3491101.3516398(1-2)Online publication date: 27-Apr-2022

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