Enhancing Interpersonal Emotion Regulation on Online Platforms
Interpersonal communication has become a vital aspect of how people manage their emotions, particularly in the digital age. Social media and online content consumption have been found to play a significant role in regulating emotions and seeking support for rest and recovery. However, these platforms were not originally designed with emotion regulation in mind, which limits their effectiveness in this regard. To address this issue, a new approach is proposed to enhance Interpersonal Emotion Regulation (IER) on online platforms through content recommendation.
The objective of this approach is to empower users to regulate their emotions while actively or passively engaging in online platforms. This is achieved by crafting media content that aligns with IER strategies, particularly empathic responding. By incorporating empathic recommendations into the content recommendation system, users are given a more personalized experience that aids in their emotional regulation efforts.
This proposed recommendation system aims to blend both system-initiated and user-initiated emotion regulation, creating an environment that allows for real-time IER practices on digital media platforms. By leveraging user activity and preferences, the system can generate empathic recommendations that are tailored to individual needs and preferences, resulting in a more effective emotion regulation experience.
Evaluating the Efficacy
To assess the effectiveness of this approach, a mixed-method research design is utilized. The research design includes the analysis of text-based social media data and a user survey. By collecting 37.5K instances of user posts and interactions on Reddit over a year, researchers have been able to gain insights into how users engage with digital media platforms for emotion regulation.
The collected data is used to design a Contextual Multi-Armed Bandits (CMAB) based recommendation system. This system utilizes features from user activity and preferences to generate empathic recommendations. Through experimentation, it has been found that these empathic recommendations are preferred by users over widely accepted emotion regulation strategies such as distraction and avoidance.
The Role of Digital Applications
Digital applications have played a crucial role in facilitating the process of digital emotion regulation. The widespread recognition of digital media applications for Digital Emotion Regulation (DER) has paved the way for advancements in this field. The proposed recommendation system builds upon this recognition and aims to further enhance the effectiveness of digital applications in supporting emotion regulation.
By leveraging the power of digital platforms and incorporating empathic recommendations, users can have a more personalized and supportive experience. This not only benefits individuals in managing their emotions but also has potential implications for mental health and well-being at a broader societal level.
In conclusion, the proposed approach to enhance Interpersonal Emotion Regulation (IER) on online platforms through content recommendation holds great promise. By incorporating empathic recommendations into the recommendation system, users can have a more effective and personalized emotion regulation experience. Further research and development in this area will likely yield valuable insights and innovations, ultimately enabling users to better manage their emotions in the digital realm.