Publication Type

Conference Proceeding Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

5-2025

Abstract

Online debates can enhance critical thinking but may escalate into hostile attacks. As humans are increasingly reliant on Generative AI (GenAI) in writing tasks, we need to understand how people utilize GenAI in online debates. To examine the patterns of writing behavior while making arguments with GenAI, we created an online forum for soccer fans to engage in turn-based and free debates in a post format with the assistance of ChatGPT, arguing on the topic of "Messi vs Ronaldo". After 13 sessions of two-part study and semi-structured interviews with 39 participants, we conducted content and thematic analyses to integrate insights from interview transcripts, ChatGPT records, and forum posts. We found that participants prompted ChatGPT for aggressive responses, created posts with similar content and logical fallacies, and sacrificed the use of ChatGPT for better human-human communication. This work uncovers how polarized forum members work with GenAI to engage in debates online.

Keywords

Co-Writing, AI-Mediated Communication, Human-AI Collaboration, Online Debate, Remote Collaboration, Generative AI, Large Language Models

Discipline

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics | Databases and Information Systems

Research Areas

Information Systems and Management

Areas of Excellence

Digital transformation

Publication

CHI '25: Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Yokohama, Japan, April 26 -May 1

First Page

1

Last Page

22

Identifier

10.1145/3706598.3713829

Publisher

ACM

City or Country

United States of America

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713829

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