Abstract
Objectives
The purpose of these studies is to examine whether the procedural justice of a social media platform enforcement system for content moderation shapes offenders' post-message takedown recidivism rates.
Methods
Users whose posts have been removed from the platform (taken down) for rule violations evaluate the justice of the platform enforcement procedure. The impact of those evaluations upon subsequent rule violations is measured. In addition, in study 2, users are randomly assigned to receive a message emphasizing the procedural justice of platform procedures and the impact of that message upon subsequent rule violations is assessed.
Results
In both studies, users who indicate that the procedures involved in the removal of their post have been fair are less likely to post new violating content in the future. In addition, those users who receive a message emphasizing the procedural justice of the platform’s mechanisms of enforcement are less likely to post new violating content in the future in comparison to those users randomly chosen to be no-message controls.
Conclusions
Social media platforms are under government and public pressure to regulate the content of the posts that appear on their sites. One enforcement strategy that has been found to be effective in legal settings is to encourage self-regulation through procedural-justice-based approaches to rule enforcement. This paper tests the viability of extending these approaches to social media platforms. Results of both studies suggest that a strategy of encouraging self-regulation by the use of procedures that users rate as being just can successfully lower recidivism rates in a social media setting.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
AMOS (Version 24). (2016). Armonk, NY: IBM.
Anwar, S., & Loughran, T. A. (2011). Testing a Bayesian learning theory of deterrence among serious juvenial offenders. Criminology, 49, 667–698.
Blader, S., & Tyler, T. R. (2003). A four component model of procedural justice: defining the meaning of a “fair” process. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 747–758.
Bond, R. M., Fariss, C. J., Jones, J. J., Kramer, A. D. I., Marlow, C., Settle, J. E., & Fowler, J. H. (2012). A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization. Nature, 489, 295–298.
Bradford, B., Grisel, F., Meares, T.L., Owens, E., Pineda, B.L., Shapiro, J.N., Tyler, T.R. & Peterman, D.E. (2019). Report of the Facebook Data Transparency Advisory Group. Yale Law School.
Chalfin, A., & McCrary, J. (2014). Criminal deterrence: a review of the literature. Journal of Economic Literature, 55(1), 5–48.
Cohen-Charash, Y., & Spector, P. E. (2001). The role of justice in organizations: a meta-analysis. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 86, 278–321.
Colquitt, J. A., Conlon, D. E., Wesson, M. J., Porter, C. O. L. H., & Ng, K. Y. (2001). Justice at the millennium: a meta-analytic review of 25 years of organizational justice research. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86, 425–445.
Colquitt, J. A., Scott, B. A., Rodell, J. B., Long, D. M., & Zapata, C. P. (2013). Justice at the millennium, a decade later: a meta-analytic test of social exchange and affect based perspectives. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98, 199–236.
Frenkel, S. & Hubbard, B. (2019). After social media bans, militant groups found ways to remain. New York Times.
Gruzd, A., Jacobson, J., Wellman, B., & Mai, P. (2016). Understanding communities in an age of social media. Information, Communication & Society, 19, 1187–1193.
Horan, S. M., Chory, R. M., & Goodboy, A. K. (2010). Understanding students’ classroom justice experiences and responses. Communication Education, 59, 453–474.
Huq, A. Z., Jackson, J., & Trinkner, R. (2016). Legitimating practices. British Journal of Criminology, 57, 1101–1122.
Jackson, S., & Fondacaro, M. (1999). Procedural justice in resolving family conflict. Law and Policy, 21, 101–127.
Kraut, R.E. & Resnick, P. (2012). Building successful online communities. MIT.
MacKenzie, D. L. (2002). Reducing the criminal activities of known offenders and delinquents. In Sherman, L.W., Farrington, D.P., Welsh, B.C. & MacKenzie, D. L. (Eds.). Evidence-based crime prevention. Chapter 9(330-404). NY: Routledge.
Paternoster, R. (2010). How much do we really know about criminal deterrence? Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 100, 765-824.
Paternoster, R., Brame, R., Mazerolle, P., & Piquero, A. (1998). Using the correct statistical test for the equality of regression coefficients. Criminology, 36, 859–866.
Schultz, M. F. (2006). Fear and norms and rock and roll: what jam bands can tell us about persuading people to obey copyright law. Berkeley Technology Law Journal, 21, 651–728.
Trinkner, R., Jackson, J., & Tyler, T. R. (2018). Bounded authority: expanding appropriate police behavior beyond procedural justice. Law and Human Behavior, 42, 280–293.
Tyler, T. R. (1988). What is procedural justice?: Criteria used by citizens to assess the fairness of legal procedures. Law and Society Review, 22, 103–135.
Tyler, T. R. (2001). Public trust and confidence in legal authorities: what do majority and minority group members want from the law and legal authorities? Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 19, 215–235.
Tyler, T.R. (2006). Why people obey the law. Princeton.
Tyler, T. R. (2009). Legitimacy and criminal justice: the benefits of self-regulation. Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, 7, 307–359.
Tyler, T. R. (2011). Trust and legitimacy in the USA and Europe. European Journal of Criminology, 8, 254–266.
Tyler, T. R., & Fagan, J. (2008). Why do people cooperate with the police? Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, 6, 231–275.
Tyler, T. R., & Huo, Y. J. (2002). Trust in the law. New York: Russell-Sage Foundation.
Tyler, T. R., & Jackson, J. (2014). Popular legitimacy and the exercise of legal authority: motivating compliance, cooperation and engagement. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 20, 78–95.
Tyler, T. R., & Trinkner, R. (2018). Why children follow rules. Oxford.
Tyler, T. R., Goff, P. A., & MacCoun, R. J. (2015). The impact of psychological science on policing in the United States. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 16(3), 75–109.
Waldron, J. (2012). The harm in hate speech. Harvard.
Wenzel, M. (2006). A letter from the tax office: compliance effects of informational and interpersonal justice. Social Justice Research, 19, 345–364.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Facebook for allowing this research to be conducted on their platform. For questions about the standards being enforced by Facebook, see https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards. Any conclusions reached about this data are the responsibility of the authors
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tyler, T., Katsaros, M., Meares, T. et al. Social media governance: can social media companies motivate voluntary rule following behavior among their users?. J Exp Criminol 17, 109–127 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-019-09392-z
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11292-019-09392-z