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The relationship between crime and the media has long been a focal point of academic research, with traditional media playing a significant role in shaping public perceptions of safety and community well-being. However, the advent of social…
Depression is a pervasive mental health condition that affects hundreds of millions of individuals worldwide, yet many cases remain undiagnosed due to barriers in traditional clinical access and pervasive stigma. Social media platforms, and…
COVID-19 pandemic has adversely and disproportionately impacted people suffering from mental health issues and substance use problems. This has been exacerbated by social isolation during the pandemic and the social stigma associated with…
Online health communities provide a knowledge exchange platform for a wide range of diseases and health conditions. Informational and emotional support helps forum participants orient around health issues beyond in-person doctor visits. So…
Online communities are important spaces for members of marginalized groups to organize and support one another. To better understand the experiences of fat people -- a group whose marginalization often goes unrecognized -- in online…
Online communities such as drug-related subreddits serve as safe spaces for people who use drugs (PWUD), fostering discussions on substance use experiences, harm reduction, and addiction recovery. Users' shared narratives on these forums…
One in seven women encounter postpartum depression upon transitioning to motherhood. Many of them frequently seek social support in online support groups. We conducted a mixed-methods formative research to assess the potential of digital…
In pseudonymous online fora like Reddit, the benefits of self-disclosure are often apparent to users (e.g., I can vent about my in-laws to understanding strangers), but the privacy risks are more abstract (e.g., will my partner be able to…
Users organize themselves into communities on web platforms. These communities can interact with one another, often leading to conflicts and toxic interactions. However, little is known about the mechanisms of interactions between…
Stigma is a barrier to treatment for individuals struggling with substance use disorders (SUD), which leads to significantly lower treatment engagement rates. With only 7% of those affected receiving any form of help, societal stigma not…
Responding to misinformation online can be an exhausting and thankless task. It takes time and energy to write effective content, puts users at risk of online harassment, and strains personal relationships. Despite these challenges, there…
Anonymity in social media platforms keeps users hidden behind a keyboard. This absolves users of responsibility, allowing them to engage in online rage, hate speech, and other text-based toxicity that harms online well-being. Recent…
The complex unfolding of the US opioid epidemic in the last 20 years has been the subject of a large body of medical and pharmacological research, and it has sparked a multidisciplinary discussion on how to implement interventions and…
We present the first large-scale comparative analysis of Truth Social and the most popular conservative Reddit communities, r/Conservative, r/conservatives, and r/Republican. Using topic modeling with FASTopic and LLM-assisted refinement,…
Understanding collective decision making at a large-scale, and elucidating how community organization and community dynamics shape collective behavior are at the heart of social science research. In this work we study the behavior of…
This study investigates whether division on political topics is mapped with the distinctive patterns of language use. We collect a total 145,832 Reddit comments on the abortion debate and explore the languages of subreddit communities…
Individuals from sexual and gender minority groups experience disproportionately high rates of poor health outcomes and mental disorders compared to their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts, largely as a consequence of minority stress…
Developing a strong community requires empowered leadership capable of overcoming governance challenges. New online platforms have given users opportunities to practice governance through content moderation roles. The over 2.8 million…
Story detection in online communities is a challenging task as stories are scattered across communities and interwoven with non-storytelling spans within a single text. We address this challenge by building and releasing the StorySeeker…
When toxic online communities on mainstream platforms face moderation measures, such as bans, they may migrate to other platforms with laxer policies or set up their own dedicated websites. Previous work suggests that within mainstream…