Gerrard, Y. (2020) The COVID-19 mental health content moderation conundrum. Social Media + Society, 6 (3). ISSN 2056-3051
Abstract
At the time of writing (mid-May 2020), mental health charities around the world have experienced an unprecedented surge in demand. At the same time, record-high numbers of people are turning to social media to maintain personal connections due to restrictions on physical movement. But organizations like the mental health charity Mind and even the UK Government have expressed concerns about the possible strain on mental health that may come from spending more time online during COVID-19. These concerns are unsurprising, as debates about the link between heavy social media use and mental illness raged long before the pandemic. But our newly heightened reliance on platforms to replace face-to-face communication has created even more pressure for social media companies to heighten their safety measures and protect their most vulnerable users. To develop and enact these changes, social media companies are reliant on their content moderation workforces, but the COVID-19 pandemic has presented them with two related conundrums: (1) recent changes to content moderation workforces means platforms are likely to be less safe than they were before the pandemic and (2) some of the policies designed to make social media platforms safer for people’s mental health are no longer possible to enforce. This Social Media + Society: 2K essay will address these two challenges in depth.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
Keywords: | COVID-19; mental health; social media; content moderation |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Sociological Studies (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 28 Aug 2020 14:25 |
Last Modified: | 28 Aug 2020 14:26 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/2056305120948186 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:164888 |