Interpretation Makes All the Difference: How Content Moderators Construct Organizational Identity and Navigate Ambiguity

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: Platforms are principal spaces for the public: to gather, share information, form online communities, and engage in self-expression. As such, social media platforms hold a massive influence on sociality and contemporary culture. Critical to platforms’ vision as a public space for all users are the commercial content moderators who enforce detailed policies to review, tag, and remove potentially harmful content from the platform. Through an analysis of interviews with TikTok content moderators and public materials, I examine how moderators navigate ambiguity in their roles from the lens of identity work. I argue that moderators construct organizational identities to cope with the limited agency and high pressures of their roles. While company culture provides moderators new incentives to conform to organizational guidelines and norms around decision-making, moderators’ organizational identities inevitably “collapse” due to burnout or disillusionment with the role or company. I discuss the implications of this burnout and disincentivizing moderator agency over policy changes.

Type of resource	text
Publication date	June 2, 2023; June 2, 2023

Author	Gan, Michelle
Thesis advisor	Christin, Angèle
Degree granting institution	Stanford University

Subject	Computing platforms
Subject	Labor
Subject	Organizational behavior > Study and teaching
Genre	Text
Genre	Thesis

DOI	https://doi.org/10.25740/np469kt9536
Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/np469kt9536

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND).

Preferred citation: Gan, M. (2023). Interpretation Makes All the Difference: How Content Moderators Construct Organizational Identity and Navigate Ambiguity. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/np469kt9536. https://doi.org/10.25740/np469kt9536.

Stanford University, Program in Science, Technology and Society, Honors Theses

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