Handle with CARE: Can LLMs Reproduce How Online Communities React?
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used as proxies for computational social analysis, yet faithfully representing the "thick descriptions" (Geertz, 1973) of human communities remains a critical challenge. Current evaluations often reduce social identity to static labels, sidelining how real-world groups navigate social shifts. To bridge this gap, we introduce CARE (Community-Aware Reaction Evaluation), a reaction-centered framework that benchmarks LLM-simulated discourse against the authentic, event-contingent responses of distinct communities to real-world news. Spanning 207 Reddit communities and covering 9,947 authentic reactions towards 2,166 news articles, CARE evaluates l...
| Authors | Nuan Wen, Chanbin Lim, Xuezhe Ma |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 12 April 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 6 October 2026 |
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