EAGER: CHS: Examining Self-Harm and Suicide Contagion Risks of Viral Social Media Challenges on Youth and Young Adults

EAGER：CHS：检查病毒式社交媒体挑战对青少年和年轻人的自残和自杀传染风险

• 批准号: 1832904
• 负责人: Kapil Chalil Madathil
• 金额: $ 4.21万
• 依托单位: Clemson University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-04-15 至 2021-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1832904&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAGER; CHS; Examining; Self; Harm

This project will study potentially harmful social media challenges, in which participants record themselves engaging in specific activities, share the experience in social networks, and encourage others to participate. Some challenges have positive effects. For example, the ALS Ice Bucket challenge involved people dumping a bucket of ice water over their heads to raise awareness of and funding for Lou Gehrig's disease. Others, however, encourage people to engage in behaviors that risk physical or psychological harm. For example, the Cinnamon challenge involves eating a spoonful of cinnamon, which can cause severe respiratory distress, while the Blue Whale challenge encourages a series of increasingly self-harmful behaviors culminating in suicide. Although there is much folklore and hearsay around such harmful challenges, actual studies and data about them are sparse. To address this, the project team will conduct a series of interview studies along with quantitative analysis of social network data around the Cinnamon and Blue Whale challenges. Analyses will examine both individual-level and message-level factors that lead people to participate in and spread these challenges. The results will inform the development of preventative measures to mitigate the spread of harmful viral Internet challenges. Findings will also provide a better understanding of how to protect vulnerable individuals who are exposed to the challenges from both the direct potential risks of participating and indirect potential risks (e.g., through the normalization of self-harm and peer pressure to engage in it).The project will address a number of specific research questions, including: 1) better assessing the extent to which viral social media challenges have caused real harm and pose a public health risk to social media users, and 2) identifying characteristics of both the messages containing these challenges and the individuals receiving and spreading them that predict risk, adoption, and spread of the challenges. The work is organized into two main thrusts. In the first, the team will conduct semi-structured, retrospective interviews with approximately 30 adolescent and young adult social media users (ages 13-25) and/or their families, who report being harmed or committing self-harm after engaging in social media challenges prevalent at the time of the studies. The questions will be structured to assess factors known to contribute to self-harm contagion effects (such as graphic depiction of the challenge, peer pressure, and support for self-harmful activities), as well as to probe people's own motivations and decision-making around participating in such challenges. The second main thrust involves larger-scale quantitative analysis of digital trace data about self-harmful challenges from five popular social media sites. This portion of the study will first include constructing and cleaning the dataset (both in terms of protecting personal information and capturing data relevant to the challenges). Next, the researchers will employ qualitative coding of how the challenge messages deviate from the Suicide Prevention Resource Center's evidence-based safe messaging guidelines. These analyses are intended to identify strategies that authors use to spread the challenges as well as the potential risk each poses. Finally, computational modeling will relate message characteristics to measures of message reach such as likes, views, and shares. Together, these research activities will provide much-needed empirical evidence of real-world social media behavior and individual decision-making around these harmful challenges. The data can be used to inform theory development regarding the spread of viral challenges, as well as interventions to mitigate their future harms.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该项目将研究潜在有害的社交媒体挑战，参与者记录自己参与特定活动的情况，在社交网络中分享经验，并鼓励其他人参与。 有些挑战会产生积极影响。例如，ALS 冰桶挑战要求人们将一桶冰水倒在头上，以提高人们对卢伽雷氏病的认识并为其提供资助。 然而，其他人则鼓励人们从事可能造成身体或心理伤害的行为。例如，肉桂挑战涉及吃一勺肉桂，这可能会导致严重的呼吸困难，而蓝鲸挑战则鼓励一系列日益严重的自残行为，最终导致自杀。 尽管关于这些有害挑战有很多民间传说和传闻，但有关它们的实际研究和数据却很少。 为了解决这个问题，项目团队将进行一系列访谈研究，并对围绕肉桂和蓝鲸挑战的社交网络数据进行定量分析。分析将检查导致人们参与和传播这些挑战的个人层面和信息层面的因素。研究结果将为制定预防措施提供信息，以减轻有害病毒互联网挑战的传播。研究结果还将更好地了解如何保护面临参与直接潜在风险和间接潜在风险挑战的弱势个体（例如，通过自我伤害的正常化和同伴压力参与自我伤害）。该项目将解决一些具体的研究问题，包括：1）更好地评估病毒式社交媒体挑战对社交媒体用户造成真正伤害和公共健康风险的程度，以及2）识别包含以下内容的消息的特征：这些挑战以及接受和传播这些挑战的个人预测风险、挑战的采用和蔓延。这项工作分为两个主要方向。 首先，团队将对大约 30 名青少年和年轻社交媒体用户（13-25 岁）和/或其家人进行半结构化回顾性访谈，他们报告在使用社交媒体后受到伤害或自残研究期间普遍存在的挑战。 这些问题的结构将评估已知的导致自残传染效应的因素（例如对挑战的图形描述、同伴压力和对自残活动的支持），并探讨人们自己的动机和决策围绕参与此类挑战。 第二个主旨涉及对来自五个流行社交媒体网站的有关自残挑战的数字跟踪数据进行更大规模的定量分析。 研究的这一部分将首先包括构建和清理数据集（无论是在保护个人信息还是捕获与挑战相关的数据方面）。接下来，研究人员将采用定性编码来确定挑战消息如何偏离自杀预防资源中心基于证据的安全消息传递指南。这些分析旨在确定作者用来传播挑战的策略以及每种策略带来的潜在风险。最后，计算建模将消息特征与消息覆盖范围的度量（例如点赞、查看和分享）联系起来。 总之，这些研究活动将为现实世界的社交媒体行为和围绕这些有害挑战的个人决策提供急需的经验证据。这些数据可用于为有关病毒挑战传播的理论发展以及减轻其未来危害的干预措施提供信息。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查进行评估，被认为值得支持标准。

项目成果

Evaluating News Media Reports On the Blue Whale Challenge ’ For Adherence to Suicide Prevention Safe Messaging Guidelines

评估新闻媒体对蓝鲸挑战的报道 — 遵守自杀预防安全信息指南

• DOI: 10.1145/3392831
• 发表时间: 2020-04
• 期刊: Proceedings of the ACM on humancomputer interaction
• 作者: Roth, Rebecca;Abraham, Jaclyn;Zinzow, Heidi;Wisniewski, Pamela;Chalil Madathil, Kapil
• 通讯作者: Chalil Madathil, Kapil

A study of adolescents’ and young adults’ TikTok challenge participation in South India

一项针对印度南部青少年和年轻人参与 TikTok 挑战的研究

• DOI: 10.1016/j.hfh.2022.100005
• 发表时间: 2021-12
• 期刊: Human Factors in Healthcare
• 作者: Roth, R.;Ajithkumar, P.;Natarajan, G.;Achuthan, K.;Moon, P.;Zinzow, H.;Madathil, K. Chalil
• 通讯作者: Madathil, K. Chalil

An Investigation of the Factors Predicting Participation in Social Media Challenge

预测参与社交媒体挑战的因素的调查

• DOI: 10.1177/1071181320641188
• 发表时间: 2020-12
• 期刊: Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting
• 作者: Khasawneh, Amro;Narasimha, Shraddhaa;Madathil, Kapil Chalil;Zinzow, Heidi;Rosopa, Patrick
• 通讯作者: Rosopa, Patrick

An Investigation of the Portrayal of Social Media Challenges on YouTube and Twitter

YouTube 和 Twitter 上社交媒体挑战描述的调查

• DOI: 10.1145/3444961
• 发表时间: 2021-03-27
• 期刊: ACM Transactions on Social Computing
• 作者: A. Khasawneh;K. Madathil;H. Zinzow;P. Wisniewski;Amal Ponathil;Hunter Rogers;Sruthy Agnisarman;Rebecca Roth;M. Narasimhan
• 通讯作者: M. Narasimhan

Examining the Self-harm and Suicide Contagion Effects Related to the Portrayal of the Blue Whale Challenge on YouTube and Twitter (Preprint)

检查与 YouTube 和 Twitter 上的蓝鲸挑战描述相关的自残和自杀传染效应（预印本）

• DOI: 10.2196/15973
• 发表时间: 2020-03
• 期刊: JMIR Mental Health
• 影响因子: 5.2
• 作者: Khasawneh, Amro;Chalil Madathil, Kapil;Dixon, Emma;Wiśniewski, Pamela;Zinzow, Heidi;Roth, Rebecca
• 通讯作者: Roth, Rebecca