Harmonizing the Cacophony: An Affordance-aware Framework of Audio-Based Social Platform Moderation

Clubhouse is an audio-based social platform that launched in April 2020 and rose to popularity amidst the global COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike other platforms such as Discord, Clubhouse is entirely audio-based, and is not organized by specific communities. Following Clubhouse's surge in popularity, there has been a rise in the development of other audio-based platforms, as well as the inclusion of audio-calling features to existing platforms. In this paper, we present a framework (MIC) for analyzing audio-based social platforms that accounts for unique platform affordances, the challenges they provide to both users and moderators, and how these affordances relate to one another using MIC diagrams. Next, we demonstrate how to apply the framework to preexisting audio-based platforms and Clubhouse, highlighting key similarities and differences in affordances across these platforms. Using MIC as a lens to examine observational data from Clubhouse members we uncover user perceptions and challenges in moderating audio on the platform.