The Digital Social Safety Index (DSSI): A Transparent Composite Metric for Monitoring, Response, and Prevention in Digital Environments

We present the Digital Social Safety Index (DSSI), a composite metric for assessing social safety in digital environments. The DSSI spans three layers: monitoring (disinformation velocity, hate speech reports, identity/authentication complaints, and reason-giving rates), response (time-to-decision, appeal transparency, reversal rates, and regulatory cooperation), and prevention (coverage, completion, and learning gains in digital/media literacy). Indicators are Min–Max normalized and aggregated with transparent within-layer weights and layer coefficients (α, β, γ), allowing context-specific calibration for universities, municipalities or ministries. Built entirely from open secondary sources (e.g., platform transparency reports and governance standards), the DSSI avoids bespoke data collection while remaining auditable. Simulations demonstrate that the DSSI captures temporal risk dynamics, discriminates among policy alternatives, and prioritizes actions through a dashboard. Sensitivity analyses show ranking stability under reasonable weight shifts while identifying high-leverage levers (e.g., reducing time-to-decision and slowing harmful diffusion). The contributions include a deployable measurement tool that links transparency obligations to prevention and a roadmap for validation, automated data streams, and sector-specific weighting.