Queuing for Civility: Regulating Emotions and Reducing Toxicity in Digital Discourse

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2509.00696v1
• Date: Sun, 31 Aug 2025 04:32:15 GMT
• Title: Queuing for Civility: Regulating Emotions and Reducing Toxicity in Digital Discourse
• Authors: Akriti Verma, Shama Islam, Valeh Moghaddam, Adnan Anwar,
• Abstract summary: This paper presents a graph-based framework to identify the need for emotion regulation within online conversations.<n>A comment queuing mechanism is proposed to address intentional trolls who exploit emotions to inflame conversations.<n>Analysis of social media data shows that the graph-based framework reduced toxicity by 12%, while the comment queuing mechanism decreased the spread of anger by 15%.
• Score: 0.7402225882132513
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: The pervasiveness of online toxicity, including hate speech and trolling, disrupts digital interactions and online well-being. Previous research has mainly focused on post-hoc moderation, overlooking the real-time emotional dynamics of online conversations and the impact of users' emotions on others. This paper presents a graph-based framework to identify the need for emotion regulation within online conversations. This framework promotes self-reflection to manage emotional responses and encourage responsible behaviour in real time. Additionally, a comment queuing mechanism is proposed to address intentional trolls who exploit emotions to inflame conversations. This mechanism introduces a delay in publishing comments, giving users time to self-regulate before further engaging in the conversation and helping maintain emotional balance. Analysis of social media data from Twitter and Reddit demonstrates that the graph-based framework reduced toxicity by 12%, while the comment queuing mechanism decreased the spread of anger by 15%, with only 4% of comments being temporarily held on average. These findings indicate that combining real-time emotion regulation with delayed moderation can significantly improve well-being in online environments.

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