content moderation

An estimated 100,000 people work today as commercial content moderators. These moderators are often exposed to disturbing content, which can lead to lasting psychological and emotional distress. This literature review investigates moderators’ psychological symptomatology, drawing on other occupations involving trauma exposure to further guide understanding of both symptoms and support mechanisms. We then introduce wellness interventions and review both programmatic and technological approaches to improving wellness. Additionally, we review methods for evaluating intervention efficacy. Finally, we recommend best practices and important directions for future research. Content Warning: we discuss the intense labor and psychological effects of CCM, including graphic descriptions of mental distress and illness.

Crowdsourced labeling of political social media content is an area of increasing interest, due to the contextual nature of political content. However, there are substantial risks of human biases causing data to be labelled incorrectly, possibly advantaging certain political groups over others. Inspired by the social computing theory of social translucence and findings from social psychology, we built PairWise, a system designed to facilitate interpersonal accountability and help mitigate biases in political content labelling.