Twitter's Design Is Sparking Hostility and Controversy. Here's Why, and How That Could Change

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By Stephanie Alice Baker, Lecturer in Sociology at City, University of London, and Michael James Walsh, Associate Professor in the School of Business, Administration and Law, University of Canberra

Twitter has come under increasing public scrutiny for facilitating hostile online communications. While the microblogging site bills itself as a “free” and “safe” space for discussion , critics have highlighted the company’s inept response to repeated instances of trolling, harassment and abuse.

Our research into how people present themselves and manage their interactions with other users on Twitter suggests that case-by-case responses are inadequate. We found that Twitter’s design promotes avoidance as the easiest solution to hostility, without providing space for the kind of restorative activity that could lead to real conflict resolution.

Who faces hostility on Twitter?

Hostility on Twitter is disproportionately gambling data pakistan directed at women, people of color, and marginalized groups. For example, in 2016, American comedian Leslie Jones was inundated with racist tweets following the release of the film Ghostbusters .



Black and Indigenous athletes, such as Adam Goodes , Glen Kamara and Lewis Hamilton , have also been subjected to racist abuse on Twitter and have implored the platform to do more to address the situation.

More recently, racist tweets targeting black English footballers proliferated following the national team's defeat to Italy in the UEFA European Football Championship.



In 2018, Amnesty International published a report detailing the extent of abuse directed at Twitter users, describing the platform as “ a toxic place for women .” The report criticized Twitter for failing to respect women’s rights and responding transparently to reports of violence.

Twitter's response: How the platform's design encourages hostile interaction
The level of hostility on Twitter is partly explained by the way the platform is designed. Sociologist Ian Hutchby calls this the “ affordances ” of a technology: the material possibilities that a technology offers its users, the kinds of actions it enables and constrains.

Twitter's capabilities shape how users interact on the site. This includes platform features (such as mentions, retweets, and likes), default public accounts, and the ability for users to be anonymous. The character limit on tweets also facilitates brief, impulsive, and unfriendly exchanges .

In 2017, the company introduced changes to reduce hostility on Twitter. Notable changes included doubling the length of tweets from 140 to 280 characters. Twitter also introduced "threads" to connect a series of tweets into a longer comment and provided the option to hide replies . These changes were intended to " help minimize unwanted replies and improve meaningful conversations " on the platform, but hostility on Twitter persists .

One reason for the level of hostility on Twitter is that the site’s settings can be manipulated to highlight controversial and abusive content . Studies also show that false and misleading news stories are retweeted more than authentic stories, especially among like-minded groups .

In 2018, Twitter launched a “ Healthy Conversation Strategy .” This aimed to assess the “health” of interactions on Twitter with a view to improving them .