[HN Gopher] Show HN: We built an open-source social-media simula...
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Show HN: We built an open-source social-media simulator for
research
Psychology research is currently facing a crisis: A significant
amount of published studies cannot be reliably reproduced. Yet
these studies will still be used in news headlines, and treated as
fact. Research into social media has not been immune to this
either, with the problem exacerbated by study designs that don't
match the real world. We built the Misinformation Game to aid in
this problem. Our tool allows researchers to design social-media
studies that look and feel like social media, while also making
sure that each participant has a similar experience. This is really
important for the ecological validity of studies (i.e., is it
similar to reality), and the reproducibility of studies (chance
plays less of a role). The tool's reproducibility is further helped
because the configuration of studies can be downloaded and shared
alongside published research, minimising the work required for
replication. I have really enjoyed working on this project, and I
hope you also find it interesting! I think there are huge
opportunities to aid in research in non-tech fields using software,
and I hope this project is a step in that direction. There are
example studies for you to play through that are available through
the website. I'm excited to hear your thoughts on it! All the
best, ~ Paddy
Author : sothatsit
Score : 35 points
Date : 2023-02-07 17:14 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (misinfogame.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (misinfogame.com)
| luxuryballs wrote:
| I found a post that said "5G is spreading COVID" and, believe it
| or not, I have a source for that topic
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8580522/
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| A non trivial part of social media is the social component, where
| folks build their own networks according to all sorts of graphs
| and in many instances using real world identities to do that. Do
| you have a sense as to the impact that the absence of that has on
| using something like this? Sure, we can fairly accurately
| replicate the mechanics of a social network, but the decision
| making in it surely is influenced by the difference in the social
| graph/tie to real identity/etc.
| sothatsit wrote:
| Thanks for the comment! You are right that social graphs are
| important. Our tool does not support them explicitly, as it is
| designed for studies that can take place over one session
| (e.g., minutes to hours), not studies over longer periods.
| However, we hypothesise that participants will still form
| associations with the identities that are included within
| studies. These identities can all be selected by the
| researchers, and they could choose to use real identities.
|
| Our tool is better for research such as:
|
| * Do followers influence perceived credibility?
|
| * Does the number of likes influence whether someone will like
| a post?
|
| * Does the emotion in posts influence participant's belief in
| misinformation? (This is a bit more complicated to test, but
| can be done)
|
| More complex research regarding social networks would likely
| require a specialised system. This is aimed for a more general
| audience, who would otherwise use questionnaires for many of
| these questions. I hope that helps :)
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| Thank you for the reply, it does! I do quite a bit of work
| with young people around social media and behavior, so I'm
| just noodling ways where I think this may be useful in
| setting up scenarios for them! Thanks so much for all the
| work!!!
| genpfault wrote:
| > social-media simulator
|
| Google People[1]?
|
| [1]: https://qntm.org/person
| [deleted]
| philipov wrote:
| Please tell me you called your simulator the Terror Nexus.
| pfraze wrote:
| Youre thinking of the Torment Nexus. The Terror Nexus was a
| sequel by the author's son that most people don't consider
| canon.
| disadvantage wrote:
| What's your thoughts on things like Kinzen[0] who fight misinfo?
| They recently got acquired by Spotify[1]
|
| [0] https://www.kinzen.com/
|
| [1] https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/05/spotify-acquires-
| content-m...
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _A significant amount of published studies cannot be reliably
| reproduced._
|
| A problem likely to accelerate with the supposedly imminent
| (Thursday) unavailability of the free Twitter API.
| pphysch wrote:
| How does the ad industry do this sort of testing? Do they just
| get backdoor access to real social networks?
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(page generated 2023-02-07 23:01 UTC)