Beyond Anonymity: Network Affordances, Under Deindividuation, Improve Social Media Discussion Quality
研究通过自建社交平台实验，发现个人匿名与社交可识别性（如政党标识）结合能提高讨论理性、降低不文明程度，对平台设计有参考价值。
Abstract The online sphere allows people to be personally anonymous while simultaneously being socially identifiable. Twitter users can use a pseudonym but signal allegiance to a political party in their profile (e.g., #MAGA). We explore the interplay of these two dimensions of anonymity on a custom-built social media platform that allowed us to examine the causal effects of personal and social anonymity on discussion quality. We find no support for the hypothesis that personal anonymity breeds incivility or lowers discussion quality in discussions on gun rights. On the other hand, when personal anonymity is combined with social identifiability (operationalized as political party visibility), it improves several features linked to discussion quality, that is, higher rationality and lower incivility. We discuss the mechanisms that might explain the results and offer recommendations for future experiments about the design of social media platforms.