Mark Warner, Ruba Abu-Salma, Steven Murdoch, Catherine O’Brien (University College London)
User reporting is an important platform tool to defend against online harms, including harassment. Yet a recent report from the Turing Institute based on a large-scale nationally representative survey found “69% thought that platforms should make it easier for people to report harmful content”. Little is known about how users experience these reporting tools within online social platforms. This project will evaluate the user experience and usability of user content reporting tools in the most popular social media platforms and their user-to-user messaging services; investigated within the context of online harassment as defined by the platforms themselves. This will be achieved through the analysis of platform-specific behaviour policies, UI inspection of reporting tools, and a user-study to understand people’s mental models as they interact with these reporting tools.