VidShare is a video-based social media simulation platform built with The Truman Platform (see below for more info). In VidShare, users perceive they are participating in a real social media platform similar to YouTube Shorts and TikTok. The platform is fully immersive and allows users to interact with video content and other user comments.
Named after the 1998 film, The Truman Show, The Truman Platform is an open-source, complete social media simulation platform. It was developed as part of a joint effort by the Cornell Social Media Lab (SML), led by former SML post-doc Dominic DiFranzo, to provide researchers a community research infrastructure to conduct social media experiments in ecologically-valid realistic environments. Researchers can create different social media environments with a repertoire of features and affordances that fit their research goals and purposes, while ensuring participants have a naturalistic social media experience.
This current iteration studies effective objections against problematic content on social media.
Change the query parameters of the URL to be directed to the different experimental conditions. See below for more information.
The first experiment manipulated two justice types (retributive vs. restorative) and three offender types (corrigible offender vs. incorrigible offender vs. an offender without corrigibility cues). Building on the results of the first experiment, the second experiment examined the nuances of justice by adding a control condition (a neutral message ignoring the harm caused) and testing the juxtaposition of two justice responses. Specifically, the second experiment included five experimental conditions: the same retributive and restorative conditions, a control condition, and two juxtaposition conditions (retributive and restorative responses presented in different orders).
Study 1:
- Branch: formal_study-official-code
| Query parameter | Definition | Values |
|---|---|---|
| obj | Indicates the justice type (type of objection) | 1, 2 1: Retributive Objection 2: Restorative Objection |
| m | Indicates the justice message | 1, 2, 3 1: Message #1 2: Message #2 3: Message #3 |
| off | Indicates the offender's moral corrigibility | 0, 1, 2 0: No information 1: Repeated Offender 2: First-Time Offender |
Study 2:
- Branch: main
| Query parameter | Definition | Values |
|---|---|---|
| obj_1 | Indicates the first message | 0_1, 0_2, 1_1, 1_2, 2_1, 2_2 0_1: Control Message #1 0_2: Control Message #2 1_1: Retributive Objection Message #1 1_2: Retributive Objection Message #2 2_1: Restorative Objection Message #1 2_2: Restorative Objection Message #2 |
| obj_2 | Indicates the second message (if defined) | 1_1, 1_2, 2_1, 2_2 1_1: Retributive Objection Message #1 1_2: Retributive Objection Message #2 2_1: Restorative Objection Message #1 2_2: Restorative Objection Message #2 |
Study 1: Study 2: https://truman-objections-v2-78b98f1a285a.herokuapp.com/
Zhao, P.; Bazarova, N.; Bae, I.; Hui, W.; Kizilcec, R. F.; Margolin, D. (2025). Restorative justice appeals trump retributive vigilance on social media. PNAS Nexus, pgaf255. https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgaf255
Zhao, P., Bazarova, N. N., DiFranzo, D., Hui, W., Kizilcec, & Margolin, D. (2024). Standing up to problematic content on social media: which objection strategies draw the audience’s approval? Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 29(1). https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmad046
- Branch: pilot_study-official-code (Or see https://github.com/cornellsml/truman_objection for original codebase)