Anonymity forms an integral and important part of our digital life. It enables us to express our true selves without the fear of judgment. In this paper, we investigate the different aspects of anonymity in the social Q&A site Quora. The choice of Quora is motivated by the fact that this is one of the rare social Q&A sites that allow users to explicitly post anonymous questions and such activity in this forum has become normative rather than a taboo. Through an analysis of 5.1 million questions, we observe that at a global scale almost no difference manifests between the linguistic structure of the anonymous and the non-anonymous questions. We find that topical mixing at the global scale to be the primary reason for the absence. However, the differences start to feature once we "deep dive" and (topically) cluster the questions and compare the clusters that have high volumes of anonymous questions with those that have low volumes of anonymous questions. In particular, we observe that the choice to post the question as anonymous is dependent on the user's perception of anonymity and they often choose to speak about depression, anxiety, social ties and personal issues under the guise of anonymity. We further perform personality trait analysis and observe that the anonymous group of users has positive correlation with extraversion, agreeableness, and negative correlation with openness. Subsequently, to gain further insights, we build an anonymity grid to identify the differences in the perception on anonymity of the user posting the question and the community of users answering it. We also look into the first response time of the questions and observe that it is lowest for topics which talk about personal and sensitive issues, which hints toward a higher degree of community support and user engagement.
There are several studies focusing on the negative aspects of anonymity, such as cyberbullying @cite_9 , aggressive behaviour @cite_8 , encouraging suicidal individuals to follow through with their threats @cite_14 , hate sites @cite_18 , and many more.
@cite_9 @cite_14 @cite_18 @cite_8
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Cyberbullying, as a serious kind of repeated, intentional, and harmful aggressive behavior, cannot be ignored. In light of the limited studies and inconsistent findings on the matter, this study explores cyberbullying's frequency and other factors (gender, academic achievement, types of technologies used, and anonymity) relevant to both the issue itself and the East Asian context. The interrelationship of different roles (bullies, victims, and bystanders) in cyberbullying is also examined. A survey was conducted with 545 Taiwan junior high school students. The results indicate that male students were more likely to bully others in cyberspace and that cyberbullying was not affected by one's level of academic achievement. Regarding the various technologies and various country-specific cyberbullying forms pertinent to technology users, instant messenger (IM) users experienced significantly more cyberbullying than users of other technologies. The survey results also indicate that the anonymity of cyberbullying was not a pertinent factor. The study found that the dominant attitude toward cyberbullying was indifference, raising alarms about the lack of cyberbullying prevention. Peers, who were the people most teenagers would likely turn to when experiencing cyberbullying, usually took no action because of their tendency to avoid conflicts and to maintain group harmony. In its interpretation of the findings, this study emphasizes Taiwan's context, including Confucian philosophy. The growth of the Internet at a means of communication has sparked the interest of researchers in several fields (e.g. communication, social psychology, industrial-organizational psychology) to investigate the issues surrounding the expression of different social behaviors in this unique social context. Of special interest to researchers is the increased importance that anonymity seems to play in computer-mediated communication (CMC). This paper reviews the literature related to the issues of anonymity within the social context, particularly in CMC, demonstrating the usefulness of established social psychological theory to explain behavior in CMC and discussing the evolution of the current theoretical explanations in explaining the effects of anonymity in social behavior in CMC environments. Several suggestions for future research are proposed in an attempt to provide researchers with new avenues to investigate how anonymity can play both positive and negative roles in CMC. Cyberbullying has emerged as an important and growing social problem, wherein people use online social networks and mobile phones to bully victims with offensive text, images, audio and video on a 247 basis. This paper studies negative user behavior in the Ask.fm social network, a popular new site that has led to many cases of cyberbullying, some leading to suicidal behavior.We examine the occurrence of negative words in Ask.fms question+answer profiles along with the social network of likes of questions+answers. We also examine properties of users with cutting behavior in this social network. The popularity, availability, and ubiquity of information and communication technologies create new opportunities for online harassment. The present study evaluates factors associated with young adult women's online harassment experiences through a multi-factor measure accounting for the frequency and severity of negative events. Findings from a survey of 659 undergraduate and graduate students highlight the relationship between harassment, well-being, and engagement in strategies to manage one's online identity. We further identify differences in harassment experiences across three popular social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We conclude by discussing this study's contribution to feminist theory and describing five potential design interventions derived from our data that may minimize these negative experiences, mitigate the psychological harm they cause, and provide women with more proactive ways to regain agency when using communication technologies.