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Future Development

We intend to continue developing this tool over time, but with the release of this tool are hitting a pause so that we can support current research, listen to researcher feedback, and further solidify the foundation before we move forward.

Our ability to expand the tool is partially contingent on our funding, so if you know of funding opportunities, please make sure to let Arvin know! However, because the tool is open-source, anyone with coding experience can make their own additions to the functionality of the tool, independent of us! However, in the spirit of open science, we ask that if anyone does go this route, they consider coordinating with the project team in case the additions can be integrated into a future version of the tool for the broader research community to use.

Below, we have listed features we are looking to integrate into future versions of the tool in rough, descending order of priority (taking into consideration feasibility, anticipated use, and researcher feedback received-to-date) in different categories. Of course, if you have your own suggestions, please do not hesitate to let Arvin know!

Study Customization​

  • Expand the "Misinformation" page type's functionality to allow greater flexibility in referencing and displaying participants' interactions with social media pages; including the ability to reference custom stimuli metadata.
  • Providing an option for pages to auto-continue to the next page after a specified amount of time has passed
  • Advanced styling (e.g., dark mode toggle)
  • Support for conducting longitudinal, multi-session studies at the same study URL (currently, longitudinal research can be done using a different condition for each URL)
  • Capacity for live interaction between confederates (i.e., researchers) and participants via direct messages or replying to their posts

Social Media Page Features​

  • Ad indicator option for post stimuli
  • Animations upon clicking like, share, comment, etc.
  • Additional platforms
    • Twitter
    • Instagram
    • TikTok
    • Reddit
    • YouTube
  • Ability to upload ephemeral stimuli (e.g., stories)
  • Expanded, multi-page navigation within the social media page, featuring:
    • Ability to navigate to dedicated pages for posts and mock user profiles
    • Ability to upload supplemental post stimuli, which populates mock users' profiles and search functionality
    • Ability to specify which mock users liked which posts, who is following/friends with who, etc.
    • Researcher-specifiable trending topics
    • Ability to direct message mock users
  • Ability to schedule some stimuli to appear at a later time or if a participant manually refreshes the page
    • Author system, who liked, followers, posts, etc.
  • Group pages

Data Collection​

  • Ability to manually toggle collection of every type of data on or off
  • Time participants spend viewing and hovering their cursor over individual posts, post pages, and profile pages
  • Time spent off-site (e.g., in another tab, where they might be reading an article they clicked on)
  • Time participants spend drafting posts, replies, or comments on shares
  • Which posts that a participant posted, liked, shared, and/or commented on, then decided to delete, un-like, or un-share
  • Video recording (e.g. via webcam access) and eye-tracking