New Study Looks At What Content Moderators Do And Whether They Use Emotion And Judgement

A new study published in the Journal of Management Studies looked at what content moderators do and the emotion work and control on a digital health platform.

“The study was about understanding the nature of work and the risks and intricacies of new occupations that have emerged in the platform economy,” Dr. Andreas Kornelakis told us. “We were hoping to open the black box of what content moderators do. As many platforms follow a business model that relies on content and information produced by a wide audience through the Internet, the role of the moderator has become a crucial transmission link between the users of a platform and the content creators.”

The study was qualitative and inductive. The researchers went into the field with no assumptions, however, they were aware of existing studies about the work of moderators in the for-profit platform economy. 

“What was driving our curiosity, and distinguishing the focus of our study,” Dr. Kornelakis told us, “was that we were interested in the non-profit platform economy, and specifically a digital health platform that creates content through patients’ feedback for healthcare providers.”

This is about the future of work. The researchers wanted to know more about the tasks and nature of work of new occupational roles such as content moderators. Central to this, is to understand the impact of new type of work roles to employees’ emotional and physical wellbeing. 

“This is a broader concern and rather than sugarcoating new digital technologies, we must uncover possible dangers and risks of new ways of working and new technologies,” Dr. Kornelakis told us. “For example, the 24/7 connectivity are linked to burnout and exhaustion, the anonymity of the platform economy enables online abuse and harassment sometimes more than traditional workplaces, whilst employers’ digital surveillance strategies can also have an impact on the mental health and wellbeing of employees.”

Theory informed the research team’s understanding of the context of moderation work, and this understanding was fundamentally enriched by the data they were collecting from the ground. The results are transferable to other type of platforms including social media platforms.

“The results are multidimensional but can be summarized that content moderators are not emotionless cogs who follow rules of moderation as a simple transmission belt between patients and healthcare providers,” Dr. Kornelakis told us. “Instead, they use their judgment and discretion to edit content, screen out fact from fiction, assess the severity of the experience reported and sometimes even take a duty of care towards the authors of these stories.By linking patients to healthcare support they would get out of their remit to follow a duty of care logic. Especially, this element of providing care, which is outside their responsibilities was the most surprising in the findings.”

Moving forward, the researchers believe these results have several implications. One implication is that since moderators need to use their emotions and judgement to perform their duty to vulnerable patients, this new occupation is not easily automated and replaced by algorithms or generative AI. In addition, it means that the emotional toll of moderating patient experiences (or users’ experiences) should not be underestimated. 

“Instead, the practical implications are that moderators should have regular access to counselling services, health check-ins from line managers and access to benefits such as occupational health professionals,” Dr. Kornelakis told us. “We also recommend that platforms are resourced to provide formal and informal peer support structures to help moderators address these most challenging parts of their work.”