@inproceedings{low-etal-2021-quality,
title = "It{'}s quality and quantity: the effect of the amount of comments on online suicidal posts",
author = "Low, Daniel and
Zuromski, Kelly and
Kessler, Daniel and
Ghosh, Satrajit S. and
Nock, Matthew K. and
Dempsey, Walter",
editor = "Feder, Amir and
Keith, Katherine and
Manzoor, Emaad and
Pryzant, Reid and
Sridhar, Dhanya and
Wood-Doughty, Zach and
Eisenstein, Jacob and
Grimmer, Justin and
Reichart, Roi and
Roberts, Molly and
Shalit, Uri and
Stewart, Brandon and
Veitch, Victor and
Yang, Diyi",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the First Workshop on Causal Inference and NLP",
month = nov,
year = "2021",
address = "Punta Cana, Dominican Republic",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2021.cinlp-1.8",
doi = "10.18653/v1/2021.cinlp-1.8",
pages = "95--103",
abstract = "Every day, individuals post suicide notes on social media asking for support, resources, and reasons to live. Some posts receive few comments while others receive many. While prior studies have analyzed whether specific responses are more or less helpful, it is not clear if the quantity of comments received is beneficial in reducing symptoms or in keeping the user engaged with the platform and hence with life. In the present study, we create a large dataset of users{'} first r/SuicideWatch (SW) posts from Reddit (N=21,274), collect the comments as well as the user{'}s subsequent posts (N=1,615,699) to determine whether they post in SW again in the future. We use propensity score stratification, a causal inference method for observational data, and estimate whether the amount of comments {---}as a measure of social support{---} increases or decreases the likelihood of posting again on SW. One hypothesis is that receiving more comments may \textit{decrease} the likelihood of the user posting in SW in the future, either by reducing symptoms or because comments from untrained peers may be harmful. On the contrary, we find that receiving more comments \textit{increases} the likelihood a user will post in SW again. We discuss how receiving more comments is helpful, not by permanently relieving symptoms since users make another SW post and their second posts have similar mentions of suicidal ideation, but rather by reinforcing users to seek support and remain engaged with the platform. Furthermore, since receiving only 1 comment {---}the most common case{---} decreases the likelihood of posting again by 14{\%} on average depending on the time window, it is important to develop systems that encourage more commenting.",
}
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<abstract>Every day, individuals post suicide notes on social media asking for support, resources, and reasons to live. Some posts receive few comments while others receive many. While prior studies have analyzed whether specific responses are more or less helpful, it is not clear if the quantity of comments received is beneficial in reducing symptoms or in keeping the user engaged with the platform and hence with life. In the present study, we create a large dataset of users’ first r/SuicideWatch (SW) posts from Reddit (N=21,274), collect the comments as well as the user’s subsequent posts (N=1,615,699) to determine whether they post in SW again in the future. We use propensity score stratification, a causal inference method for observational data, and estimate whether the amount of comments —as a measure of social support— increases or decreases the likelihood of posting again on SW. One hypothesis is that receiving more comments may decrease the likelihood of the user posting in SW in the future, either by reducing symptoms or because comments from untrained peers may be harmful. On the contrary, we find that receiving more comments increases the likelihood a user will post in SW again. We discuss how receiving more comments is helpful, not by permanently relieving symptoms since users make another SW post and their second posts have similar mentions of suicidal ideation, but rather by reinforcing users to seek support and remain engaged with the platform. Furthermore, since receiving only 1 comment —the most common case— decreases the likelihood of posting again by 14% on average depending on the time window, it is important to develop systems that encourage more commenting.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T It’s quality and quantity: the effect of the amount of comments on online suicidal posts
%A Low, Daniel
%A Zuromski, Kelly
%A Kessler, Daniel
%A Ghosh, Satrajit S.
%A Nock, Matthew K.
%A Dempsey, Walter
%Y Feder, Amir
%Y Keith, Katherine
%Y Manzoor, Emaad
%Y Pryzant, Reid
%Y Sridhar, Dhanya
%Y Wood-Doughty, Zach
%Y Eisenstein, Jacob
%Y Grimmer, Justin
%Y Reichart, Roi
%Y Roberts, Molly
%Y Shalit, Uri
%Y Stewart, Brandon
%Y Veitch, Victor
%Y Yang, Diyi
%S Proceedings of the First Workshop on Causal Inference and NLP
%D 2021
%8 November
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Punta Cana, Dominican Republic
%F low-etal-2021-quality
%X Every day, individuals post suicide notes on social media asking for support, resources, and reasons to live. Some posts receive few comments while others receive many. While prior studies have analyzed whether specific responses are more or less helpful, it is not clear if the quantity of comments received is beneficial in reducing symptoms or in keeping the user engaged with the platform and hence with life. In the present study, we create a large dataset of users’ first r/SuicideWatch (SW) posts from Reddit (N=21,274), collect the comments as well as the user’s subsequent posts (N=1,615,699) to determine whether they post in SW again in the future. We use propensity score stratification, a causal inference method for observational data, and estimate whether the amount of comments —as a measure of social support— increases or decreases the likelihood of posting again on SW. One hypothesis is that receiving more comments may decrease the likelihood of the user posting in SW in the future, either by reducing symptoms or because comments from untrained peers may be harmful. On the contrary, we find that receiving more comments increases the likelihood a user will post in SW again. We discuss how receiving more comments is helpful, not by permanently relieving symptoms since users make another SW post and their second posts have similar mentions of suicidal ideation, but rather by reinforcing users to seek support and remain engaged with the platform. Furthermore, since receiving only 1 comment —the most common case— decreases the likelihood of posting again by 14% on average depending on the time window, it is important to develop systems that encourage more commenting.
%R 10.18653/v1/2021.cinlp-1.8
%U https://aclanthology.org/2021.cinlp-1.8
%U https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2021.cinlp-1.8
%P 95-103
Markdown (Informal)
[It’s quality and quantity: the effect of the amount of comments on online suicidal posts](https://aclanthology.org/2021.cinlp-1.8) (Low et al., CINLP 2021)
ACL