Show Content Reach (# of Views)

Goal: Evoke self-consciousness for post conscientiousness Evidence rating (PDN): Emergent Civic signal: Understand — Promote thoughtful conversation When to use: Reactive

What it is

This counts, and relays back to the user, the number of distinct users who have seen a post or comment that user has made.

Different methodologies to count views could be used by different platforms, so long as they are consistent within the platform.

This view meter must be clear and distinct from other social metrics relayed back to users, such as the number of upvotes/likes, shares/retweets, &c.

Intended impact

• People will compose their own posts/comments with more care because they realize how big their audience really is

• People will respond less to trolls who have gotten comparatively few views

Evidence that it works

• Facebook (2013) conducted an analysis of survey data to understand the discrepancy between users' perceptions of their audience and their actual audience.

• They found that users consistently thought their audience was much smaller (27% of true size).

Why it matters

According to researchers from the Facebook study: "Users have scarce information about who actually sees their content, making their audience seem invisible and difficult to estimate." this can lead to over-disclosure and a lack of self-censorship.

Special considerations

Examples

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This intervention entry currently lacks photographic evidence (screencaps, &c.)

Citations

• *Quantifying the Invisible Audience in Social Networks* — Michael Bernstein, Eytan Bakshy, Moira Burke, Brian Karrer (ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), April 27, 2013)

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From the Prosocial Design Network's Digital Intervention Library (https://www.prosocialdesign.org/library/show-content-reach), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Reformatted for the RT Commons; text otherwise as published. Library citation: Prosocial Design Network (2024), Digital Intervention Library, https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/Q4RMB. Anything built from this pattern should credit the Prosocial Design Network and the researchers cited above.

Details

• goal: Evoke self-consciousness for post conscientiousness
• citations: [object Object]
• image alt: A mockup of an intervention showing a Twitter comment, but it has a new button along the bottom that shows how many people have viewed the tweet.
• image url: https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/647f696dc653a97c26f42a0b/647f696dc653a97c26f42b4f_5fa0127f442deb752e724dca_5f5a35029da58e7f17b1a94c_200909_visibility.png
• pdn rating: Emergent
• when to use: Reactive
• civic signal: Understand
• pdn library doi: 10.17605/OSF.IO/Q4RMB
• civic signal goal: Promote thoughtful conversation