Tackling Echo Chambers on Social Media

Gamification is used in various domains to achieve a variety of goals. It could be used to engender intrinsic motivation in individuals as well as to facilitate collective actions among large groups. For this study, we focus on collective action problems in the context of online platforms and marketplaces. Broadly, we seek to better understand “how to apply gamification techniques to drive user-generated content on social media”

We define social media as interactive technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information through virtual communities and networks. We note that social media algorithms are optimized for user engagement. Unfortunately, it has resulted in negative externalities such as the spread of misinformation and the formation of echo chambers. On the flip side, platforms battling this problem through unilateral censorship lead one to question the neutrality of platforms. We, therefore, explore whether we can use gamification to mitigate this problem of misinformation and echo chambers. Specifically, we want to find “whether we can counteract bad behavior and crowdsource better content using rewards in the form of crypto tokens.”

Link to the paper- Mirror