Congratulations to Dr. Wisniewski and Ph.D. candidate Karla Badillo-Urquiola on co-authoring an article soon to be published in ACM’s Journal of Transactions on Social Computing. The article, titled, “Happiness and Fear: Using Emotions as a Lens to Disentangle How Users Felt about the Launch of Facebook Reactions” examines how the reactions feature for for interacting with posts and comments on Facebook impacted users, and identifies design implications for this part of Facebook’s user interface. The article abstract is listed below:
- Wisniewski, P., Badillo-Urquiuola, K., Ashktorab, Z., Vitak, J. (2020). Happiness and Fear: Using Emotions as a Lens to Disentangle How Users Felt about the Launch of Facebook Reactions. ACM Journal of Computing on Social Computing.
Abstract: The present study applies a social ecological framework of adolescent resilience to examine how online risk exposure (e.g., online harassment and sexual solicitations) and online social capital (i.e., resources and support garnered from one’s community) influence psychological stress on adolescents. We conducted a web-based survey of adolescents (aged 13 to 17) in the United States, and found that exposure to online risks helped explain the association between Internet usage and adolescent psychological stress. Contrary to our hypotheses, online social capital moderated the relationship between online risk exposure and psychological stress in unanticipated ways. Instead of playing a protective role by reducing stress, high levels of online social capital strengthened the relationship between risk exposure and psychological stress. This suggests that adolescents who rely heavily on the formation of social capital online may be more vulnerable to psychological stress resulting from online risk exposure than adolescents who do not garner social capital from online environments. Our study is the first to identify online social capital as a potential risk factor in relation to Internet use and online risk exposure for adolescents. We discuss the implications of our findings for researchers, educators, parents and adolescents.