Anonymity and Identity Online

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Ederer, Florian, Goldsmith-Pinkham, Paul, Jensen, Kyle
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Ederer, Florian
Goldsmith-Pinkham, Paul
Jensen, Kyle
author_facet Ederer, Florian
Goldsmith-Pinkham, Paul
Jensen, Kyle
contents Economics Job Market Rumors (EJMR) is an online forum and clearinghouse for information on the academic job market for economists. It also includes content that is abusive, defamatory, racist, misogynistic, or otherwise "toxic." Almost all of this content is created anonymously by contributors who receive a four-character username when posting on EJMR. Using only publicly available data we show that the statistical properties of the scheme by which these usernames were generated allows the IP addresses from which most posts were made to be determined with high probability. We recover 47,630 distinct IP addresses of EJMR posters and attribute them to 66.1% of the roughly 7 million posts made over the past 12 years. We geolocate posts and describe aggregated cross-sectional variation -- particularly regarding toxic, misogynistic, and hate speech -- across sub-forums, geographies, institutions, and IP addresses. Our analysis suggests that content on EJMR comes from all echelons of the economics profession, including, but not limited to, its elite institutions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_15948
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Anonymity and Identity Online
Ederer, Florian
Goldsmith-Pinkham, Paul
Jensen, Kyle
General Economics
Economics
Applications
Economics Job Market Rumors (EJMR) is an online forum and clearinghouse for information on the academic job market for economists. It also includes content that is abusive, defamatory, racist, misogynistic, or otherwise "toxic." Almost all of this content is created anonymously by contributors who receive a four-character username when posting on EJMR. Using only publicly available data we show that the statistical properties of the scheme by which these usernames were generated allows the IP addresses from which most posts were made to be determined with high probability. We recover 47,630 distinct IP addresses of EJMR posters and attribute them to 66.1% of the roughly 7 million posts made over the past 12 years. We geolocate posts and describe aggregated cross-sectional variation -- particularly regarding toxic, misogynistic, and hate speech -- across sub-forums, geographies, institutions, and IP addresses. Our analysis suggests that content on EJMR comes from all echelons of the economics profession, including, but not limited to, its elite institutions.
title Anonymity and Identity Online
topic General Economics
Economics
Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.15948