{"id":23617,"date":"2025-06-17T17:33:46","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T17:33:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/?p=23617"},"modified":"2025-06-17T18:09:24","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T18:09:24","slug":"communalytic-introduces-civility-analyzer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/2025\/06\/17\/communalytic-introduces-civility-analyzer\/","title":{"rendered":"Communalytic Introduces Civility Analyzer Module"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A New Research Module for Identifying Both Toxic and Prosocial Interactions in Online Discourse<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"Toronto, Ontario \u2013 [06\/17\/2025]<\/em> \u2013 We are pleased to announce the launch of the new Civility Analyzer<\/a> module in Communalytic<\/a>, a no-code computational social science platform developed by the Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University. This module is designed to assess the tone and quality of online interactions by automatically identifying both toxic and prosocial content in text-based datasets. It integrates two leading machine learning models: Google\u2019s Perspective and the open-source Detoxify model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Civility Analyzer extends beyond traditional toxicity detection by also identifying constructive, prosocial exchanges, offering researchers an accessible, data-driven approach to studying both prosocial and harmful behaviours across various social media platforms. The module has been available in beta for the past six months and is now fully tested and officially released on both the EDU and PRO versions of Communalytic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Advancing Social Media Research and the Study of Online Civility<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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The Civility Analyzer helps researchers, journalists, community managers, and platform designers identify posts containing threats, insults, harassment, or profanity. It also detects prosocial communication, including support, cooperation, and kindness. This dual capability offers a balanced view of digital conversations, capturing both harmful and constructive interactions. The analyzer calculates toxicity scores (such as Toxicity, Insult, and Threat) and prosocial scores (like Compassion, Curiosity, and Respect) for each post. These scores, ranging from 0 to 1, estimate the likelihood that readers would perceive an interaction as toxic or prosocial. For example, a toxicity score of 0.7 suggests that 7 out of 10 people might see the post as toxic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By releasing this module, our team aims to make it easier to analyze social media conversations, uncover discourse trends, and understand the drivers behind online interactions, all while supporting healthier digital spaces. The Civility Analyzer provides both detailed post-level insights and broader trend analysis, helping to build more respectful and inclusive platforms. Whether used for content moderation, social research, or developing strategies to encourage prosocial behaviour, this tool provides a practical, scalable way to assess the tone of online communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Integrated, Multilingual Analysis<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The module supports multiple languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi, Hinglish, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish (via Google\u2019s Perspective) and English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese (via Detoxify).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Users can either collect data from popular social media platforms or upload datasets directly into Communalytic, where each post is automatically evaluated across a range of toxicity and prosocial dimensions. The system provides visual summaries, including time-series charts and distribution graphs, and allows for the export of detailed scores for further analysis and review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more details, see our Learn More<\/a>, our FAQs<\/a>, and our Tutorials<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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About Communalytic<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Communalytic <\/a>is a no-code computational social science research tool for studying online communities and public discourse on social media. It is designed to provide researchers, journalists, and students with essential resources and infrastructure for conducting independent, public-interest research. It has a full suite of easy-to-use social media data collectors and analyzers \u2013 no coding is required. Users can bring their own data<\/a> or use one of Communalytic\u2019s various social media data collectors<\/a> to collect data from platforms such as Bluesky, Mastodon, Reddit, Telegram, X (formerly Twitter), and YouTube.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are two versions of Communalytic. Each is designed for different purposes and different sets of users:<\/p>\n\n\n\n