Abstract
Safety is an important issue in online communities. Prior research has studied online safety in terms of data security and privacy, but there is less research about emotional safety online. In particular, there is little to no knowledge about factors in the design of an online community that influence its users’ subjective perception of safety. This paper uses two theories about safety, safe space theory and psychological safety theory, as motivation to study two design features of an online community that may influence users’ perceptions of safety: exclusivity and anonymity. Our results suggest that users feel safer in an anonymous or pseudonymous online community compared to a community with no anonymity, and we provide guidance for future research to expand on the role of exclusivity. Our findings also support prior research on psychological safety’s impacts on behavior by demonstrating that higher psychological safety results in higher comfort performing different acts of online participation, which in turn results in an increased willingness to join the community. This research contributes to the theoretical understanding of safety online by combining safe space theory and psychological safety theory in order to study online safe spaces experimentally while being grounded in theory. Our findings also provide guidance to designers and organizers of online communities on the importance of perceived safety in participation in an online community and possible design choices that may encourage higher feelings of safety online.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Social Computing, Psychological Safety, Anonymity, Human-Computer Interaction, Online Communities, Intelligent
