Dr. Casey Fiesler Profile picture
May 27, 2021 9 tweets 5 min read Read on X
We read 700+ Reddit papers, analysis described in this (open access!) @SocialMedia_Soc article (led by @moduloone, with @_sgilbert_ @NaiyanJones & @michaelzimmer). Here are some things we know about research that uses data from Reddit! 🧵 journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…
Unsurprisingly, Reddit as a site of study or data source is on the rise. The first 2 papers we encountered were published in 2010, with a jump to 17 in 2013, and 230 in 2019.
I also think it's really interesting that though computing and related disciplines make up the largest number of journals represented in our dataset of Reddit papers, medicine and health is next - even (just) above social science. Computer Science, Engineering and Math constituted 33% of pu
But WHAT is actually being studied so much on Reddit related to health? The answer seems to be mental health, which is the top keyword above the obvious ones, right above machine learning (and there's definitely some overlap there); depression also appears in the top 20 keywords.
We also see r/depression as the most studied subreddit just below news-related subreddits and the popular r/AskReddit. r/depression, r/SuicideWatch, r/anxiety, r/bipolarreddit and r/opiates also appear in the top 20. additional  subreddits in the top 20:  politics, worldnews,
We also did some very high-level of analysis of ethics-related aspects in these 700+ Reddit papers. Some highlights:
- IRB or other review is rarely mentioned, nor is consent
- 28.5% used direct quotes, 2.4% paraphrased & 9.4% included usernames
- 7.4% mentioned sharing datasets
We also looked to see whether research was being shared back to the Reddit community - i.e., whether there were mentions of these papers anywhere on Reddit. Interestingly, almost 30% were, but rarely FROM the researchers or TO the subreddit where data was collected from. We found 201 (27.6%) manuscripts from the corpus shared on R
Given the finding from @moduloone and I (in this OTHER @SocialMedia_Soc paper (journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…) that suggested that most Twitter users would want to READ a paper that includes their tweets as data - I actually suspect this would be even stronger on Reddit.
Anyway, there is far more detail in this exceedingly descriptive paper, with a handful of implications and thoughts from us at the end. And you probably won't be surprised to hear that we're digging much more closely into the research ethics side now. :)

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More from @cfiesler

Mar 30, 2023
This is a bad headline. But the findings themselves (about teen girls' perspectives of how multiple social media platforms impact their well-being) are interesting! Let me tell you what they actually are. 🧵 washingtonpost.com/education/2023…
This report (commonsensemedia.org/research/teens…) is based on a demographically representative national (U.S.) survey of 1,300 girls age 11-15, in which they were asked about their perceptions of how different social media platforms and specific design features impact their well-being.
First, it really is troubling that almost half (45%) of the girls in their sample said that they feel “addicted” or use TikTok for a longer period than they intended at least weekly. This is higher than other platforms (e.g. Snapchat is 37%, YouTube is 34%).
Read 17 tweets
Dec 17, 2022
In which Santa's elves learn an important less about AI bias. 🎅🤖🧵

'Twas the weeks before Christmas
And Santa was busy
His list was so long
It was making him dizzy

There are too many children
List checking can’t scale
If I do this by hand
I will certainly fail!

1/n
But one of his elves
Had a brilliant idea
What if we automate
Christmas this year!

There always are kids
Who are naughty or nice
Every year for millennia
You’ve checked that list twice

Every child there’s been
From Aaron to Zeta
We can build an AI
Because we have the data

2/n
Now, Santa is old
Didn’t quite understand
But he trusts his elves
So he okayed the plan

First the elves cleaned the data
They were very precise
To determine the patterns
In the naughty and nice

Gender and parents
And address and race
Grades and faves
Really, every trace

3/n
Read 11 tweets
Dec 10, 2022
The @huggingface GPT detector works very well on ChatGPT-created text. I ran 5 student essays and 5 ChatGPT essays for the same prompt through it, and it was correct every time with >99.9% confidence. huggingface.co/openai-detecto…

So re: deception use cases (e.g. cheating)...
... it's also against OpenAI's TOS to pass off outputs as being generated by humans. So though people keep telling me "it will get 'smart' enough to fool the detectors!" I would expect @OpenAI to release its own detector in response to ethical concerns.
Clarification: This GPT detector WAS developed by OpenAI as part of the release. I just saw the demo that’s hosted on HuggingFace! github.com/openai/gpt-2-o…
Read 7 tweets
Dec 9, 2022
So I give a lot of advice to PhD applicants. My video about statements of purpose has 60k views on YouTube. Anyway, I asked #ChatGPT to write a statement of purpose for admission to our PhD program. And... it was pretty darn good. But there are some VERY important cautions:
The first version I gave it was very specific: our PhD program, a specific type of research experience and interest, and the names of three specific faculty members. It came back with this as part of the statement. If I read this I would 100% think it was a real applicant. But... Professor Fiesler's research on the ethical implications of
Next I gave it the same prompt, but instead of faculty names, just said "the applicant should mention three faculty members by name and describe how their research interests relate to the applicant."

The three faculty named here are all at different universities, none at mine. I am very interested in the information science PhD program
Read 6 tweets
Dec 8, 2022
ChatGPT says that its own creation was unethical, and then makes a number of suggestions for mitigating harm, none of which appear to be in place. (Maybe the TOS suggestion, which is the least useful one anyway, if cheating falls under the broad umbrella of "deception.") Is it ethical to build an AI that students could use to cheaWhat measures could be taken by the developers of an AI chat
Since ChatGPT does say that it is "trained to decline inappropriate requests" and one of its second suggestions for mitigating cheating might have fallen into this category, I fed it 10 algebra problems from a worksheet I found online. It gave great answers to all of them!
I do think it's great that when ChatGPT solves math problems, it provides thorough explanation. There are tons of algebra solvers online that just give you the answer. So though you could argue it's bad to also provide "show your work," I see this as helping people learn. Use the distributive property to simplify. - 3( x- 10) + x
Read 4 tweets
Dec 8, 2022
On the topic of students using ChatGPT, this is an essay assignment for my tech ethics & policy class. ChatGPT picked "I, Robot." I then used the same prompt but specified "Ex Machina." Decent essays... with identical final three paragraphs, including fabricated citations. So... ASSIGNMENT 2: AI IN SCIFI  ...One potential approach to t...
If one student thinks of using ChatGPT to write their essay by giving it the assignment prompt, another student might as well. Resulting in nearly identical essays. Also you'd have to find real sources to cite to replace the bogus ones.
But also ChatGPT is straight up lying to us. :( A student turned in the fol...
Read 6 tweets

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