OLIVER L.
HAIMSON,
Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Online spaces and marginalized populations

Online spaces can be important platforms for people from sensitive, stigmatized, marginalized, and vulnerable populations to discuss their problems and find support; yet platform design decisions impact how people present themselves and interact with others. By studying these groups' online self-presentation and disclosure practices, along with the politics of social media platform design, we can understand how to design technology to better support those facing experiences like sexual abuse, relationship breakups, eating disorders, depression, LGBTQ+ minority stress, and gender presentation.

Selected Publications


Disproportionate Removals and Differing Content Moderation Experiences for Conservative, Transgender, and Black Social Media Users: Marginalization and Moderation Gray Areas
Oliver L. Haimson, Daniel Delmonaco, Peipei Nie, Andrea Wegner
Proceedings of the ACM Human Computer Interaction (PACM HCI), 5(CSCW2), Article 466, October 2021, 35 pages (to be presented at CSCW 2021)
[open-access link] [PDF] [video] [blog]

Censorship of Marginalized Communities on Instagram
a community report by the Salty Algorithmic Bias Collective: Shakira L. Smith, Oliver L. Haimson, Claire Fitzsimmons, Nikki Echarte Brown
Salty, September 2021
[link]

Search Engines and the Sex Education Information Practices of LGBTQ+ Youth (short paper, lightly peer-reviewed)
Daniel Delmonaco, Gabriela Marcu, Oliver L. Haimson
Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIST), 57(1), October 2020
[link]

Drawing from Justice Theories to Support Targets of Online Harassment
Sarita Schoenebeck, Oliver L. Haimson, Lisa Nakamura
New Media & Society, 23(5), May 2021 (first published online March 2020), p. 1278-1300
[link] [PDF] [press]

The Language of LGBTQ+ Minority Stress Experiences on Social Media
Koustuv Saha, Sang Chan Kim, Manikanta D. Reddy, Albert J. Carter, Eva Sharma, Oliver L. Haimson, Munmun De Choudhury
Proceedings of the ACM Human Computer Interaction (PACM HCI), 3(CSCW), Article 89, November 2019, 21 pages (presented at CSCW 2019)
[acceptance rate: 31%]
[link] [PDF]

How to Do Better with Gender on Surveys: A Guide for HCI Researchers (magazine article, editor reviewed)
Katta Spiel, Oliver L. Haimson, Danielle Lottridge
ACM Interactions Magazine, 26(4), July-August 2019, p. 62-65
[link] [PDF] [blog]

Social Support, Reciprocity, and Anonymity in Responses to Sexual Abuse Disclosures on Social Media
Nazanin Andalibi, Oliver L. Haimson, Munmun De Choudhury, Andrea Forte
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 25(5), Article 28, October 2018, 35 pages
[link] [PDF]

“Genderfluid” or “Attack Helicopter”: Responsible HCI Research Practice with Non-Binary Gender Variation in Online Communities
Samantha Jaroszewski, Danielle Lottridge, Oliver L. Haimson, Katie Quehl
ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Paper 307, April 2018, 15 pages
[acceptance rate: 26%]
[link] [PDF]

Class Confessions: Restorative Properties in Online Experiences of Socioeconomic Stigma
Eugenia Ha Rim Rho, Oliver L. Haimson, Nazanin Andalibi, Melissa Mazmanian, Gillian R. Hayes
ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, May 2017
[acceptance rate: 25%]
[link] [PDF]

Baking Gender Into Social Media Design: How Platforms Shape Categories for Users and Advertisers
Rena Bivens, Oliver L. Haimson
Social Media + Society (special issue on Making Digital Cultures of Gender and Sexuality with Social Media), 2(4), October-December 2016
[open-access link] [PDF] [blog]

Constructing and Enforcing "Authentic" Identity Online: Facebook, Real Names, and Non-Normative Identities
Oliver L. Haimson, Anna Lauren Hoffmann
First Monday (special issue on A Decade of Web 2.0: Reflections, Critical Perspectives, and Beyond), 21(6), June 2016
[open-access link]

Understanding Social Media Disclosures of Sexual Abuse Through the Lenses of Support Seeking and Anonymity
Nazanin Andalibi, Oliver L. Haimson, Munmun De Choudhury, Andrea Forte
ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, May 2016
[acceptance rate: 23%]
[link] [PDF]

“Hunger Hurts but Starving Works:” Characterizing the Presentation of Eating Disorders Online
Jessica Pater, Oliver L. Haimson, Nazanin Andalibi, Elizabeth Mynatt
ACM CSCW Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, February 2016
[acceptance rate: 25%]
[link] [PDF]