Arguing on the Internet: UW Researchers Studying How to Make Online Arguments Productive

upstart writes in with an IRC submission:

How to make online arguments productive:

The internet seems like the place to go to get into fights. Whether they're with a family member or a complete stranger, these arguments have the potential to destroy important relationships and consume a lot of emotional energy.

Researchers at the University of Washington worked with almost 260 people to understand these disagreements and to develop potential design interventions that could make these discussions more productive and centered around relationship-building. The team published these findings this April in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the ACM in Human Computer Interaction Computer-Supported Cooperative Work.

"Despite the fact that online spaces are often described as toxic and polarizing, what stood out to me is that people, surprisingly, want to have difficult conversations online," said lead author Amanda Baughan, a UW doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. "It was really interesting to see that people are not having the conversations they want to have on online platforms. It pointed to a big opportunity to design to support more constructive online conflict."

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.