Technology reflects, and often exacerbates, structural inequities in society. Combatting these inequities requires understanding not only how a person interacts with an interface, but how that interaction fits into a broader ecosystem. This talk will describe two areas my group is working in. The first examines how social media platforms govern online harassment. Current approaches to governance rely on criminal legal frameworks that can be overly punitive and discriminatory. Our work introduces alternative justice frameworks, like restorative justice, that seek to recognize and repair harms. The second describes dark patterns and profiling via empirical studies in three domains: consumer behavior in online purchasing, algorithmic affinity profiling in targeted advertising, and AI and human-powered tools for accessibility. I will reflect on who might be harmed by misleading or deceptive design and who should be responsible for addressing it.

 

Sarita Schoenebeck is an Associate Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. Her research examines social and technical approaches to creating more safe and equitable experiences online. She is the recipient of the NSF CAREER award, ACM CSCW and UMSI Service awards, and Best Paper and Honorable Mention awards at CHI and CSCW. Her research has been covered in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, and elsewhere. She is a Fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Yale Information Society Project, and the Yale Justice Collaboratory. Sarita received her PhD in Human-Centered Computing from Georgia Tech.