【公开学术报告】Myriads of Fake Review: Contested Control on User-Generated Content Platforms

Myriads of Fake Review: Contested Control on User-Generated Content Platforms

Guest Speaker:     Dr. Hui Sun (Northwestern University)

Date & Time:        9:30-11:00, Wed. 20th, Oct. 2021

Zoom Meeting:    825 727 48625（Password: 876141）

Click Link:            https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82572748625

ABSTRACT

Organizations in the digital age increasingly leverage online communities to create value. This is particularly true among platform firms that rely on user-generated content (UGC). Despite ample anecdotal evidence that suggests UGC platforms struggle to manage user communities, few research has directly unpacked the underlying mechanisms. Combining a machine learning approach and qualitative analysis of the largest interest-based online rating community in China, we investigate how the platform defines and regulates “fake” reviews, and how users contest and justify system-gaming. We found that distinct conceptualizations of rating (rating as resource acquisition and rating as civic engagement) led to unequally sensitive to the presence of algorithmic control among users, and subsequently contributed to variations in user tactics to exercise control. Our work integrates prior research in platforms and online communities and provides a refreshed lens into the unique challenges faced by UGC platforms in managing communities with open membership. We highlight the complexity in navigating the socio-cognitive landscapes co-constituted by users and algorithms, especially the core/peripheral divide in algorithmic sensitivity.

Keywords: user-generated content, algorithm, control, evaluations

Biography

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Management & Organizations Department at Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. My research concerns the role of cognition in entrepreneurship, behavioral strategy, and social networks. As a mixed-methods scholar, I use a combination of quantitative, qualitative, and computational methods. You can find resources on automating surveys (Javascript), interactive network analysis (R), and network learning experiments (Python) on my Github. I am a keen advocate for women in coding and reproducible research.

Prior to Northwestern, I obtained my B.S. in Experimental Psychology and B.A. in Digital Entertainment Design from Tsinghua University. I also had a wonderful time doing research on cognitive modeling in Dr. Cleotilde (Coty) Gonzalez’s Dynamic Decision Making Lab at Carnegie Mellon University.