Nov. 5: Sharon Heung

Towards Designing Safer Platforms: Understanding and Mitigating Ableism On Social Media

Building safer social media platforms starts with designing for those most at risk of harm. Disabled people represent one-sixth of the world’s population and are disproportionately likely to experience hate online, yet research on their experiences of ableism (disability-specific discrimination) remains limited. My dissertation addresses this gap by asking: how do disabled people experience ableism online, and how might we design AI-based approaches to mitigate the harm?

In this talk, I will present studies that follow a human-centered design process, first empirically understanding ableism online and then using those findings to inform new AI-based moderation approaches. I will begin with two studies on how disabled people experience ableist microaggressions and overt hate online, and how these experiences affect their well-being and social media use. Throughout, I will show how current platform moderation fails to address ableist hate and often exacerbates harm, a phenomenon I call “platform-enabled ableism.” I will then present two studies exploring AI-based moderation designed to address these shortcomings: personalized moderation that helps users filter out triggering ableist text, and ongoing work on AI-generated educational interventions that proactively encourage disability-inclusive writing. For both, I will discuss key design considerations and limitations of AI-powered moderation. Together, this work shows how centering disabled users in moderation design can lead to systems that are safer and more just for everyone.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Sharon Heung is a postdoctoral scholar in Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington (UW), where her research sits at the intersection of human-computer interaction, accessibility, and digital safety. Her work appears at top-tier computing venues including CHI, ASSETS, and CSCW, and has been cited by UNESCO and the Government of Canada to inform policy. She earned her PhD in Information Science from Cornell University, supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, Cornell’s First Year PhD Fellowship, and Cornell Tech’s Digital Life Initiative. Beyond academia, she has conducted research with Google’s Trust and Safety team and worked at AT&T. Before her PhD, she completed her bachelor’s degree in HCDE at UW with a minor in global health and was named a Husky 100.