CHS: Medium: Drawing from Theories of Justice to Respond to Online Harassment

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This award investigates how theories and models of justice can be designed into online systems for people and technology to more effectively and productively respond to online harassment. It develops approaches to respond to online harassment in ways that promote perceptions of fairness of process and outcome and reduce likelihood of future harassment by both the offender and the community. This research will provide Internet users with theoretically-informed strategies for responding to online offenses. It will also provide technology companies and policymakers with guidelines for promoting civility and inclusivity online. It will translate research results to the public through a web-based resource for Internet users and will produce a toolbox of educational resources that exposes students to the theories, methods, and open questions surrounding online harassment - a widespread and socially relevant problem in computing that has not been solved by existing systems. Currently, automated approaches such as keyword detection are plagued by errors that have counter-productive results, while social practices such as reporting demand exhaustive labor from victims. Both approaches rely on a model of criminal justice that seeks to identify and punish offenders for their offenses; however, this model breaks down in online environments where harassers can hide behind anonymous identities and lagging legal systems.The work will first 1) audit existing site policies and practices for responding to online harassment and map those to theories of justice; and 2) investigate how Internet users assess and respond to harassment based on characteristics of the site, offender, post, and community. Then, it will propose and evaluate interventions that 3) promote perceptions of fairness in process and outcome in response to harassment; and 4) reduce likelihood of future harassment. Finally, it will provide a public-facing interactive tool that 5) trains Internet users to identify and improve their own orientations toward retribution online; and 6) provides educational content for high school and college students to learn theories, methods, and opportunities in the field of computing through a robust set of case studies in online harassment. This research employs a novel and potentially transformative vision for leveraging fundamental principles of justice, including fairness, transparency, proportionality, and reparation, into online interactions. This may be more effective than existing models because it is not as dependent on the ability to enact consequences for any given user. This project addresses numerous conceptual and technical challenges, including how to enact fair processes and proportionate outcomes in responses to online harassment.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.