Open Positions

To better understand where responsibility both should and practically can be assigned for overall online safety within the user/system relationship, the Sociotechnical Equity and Agency Lab is conducting research to develop a framework for better understanding, assigning, and negotiating responsibility for online safety within the user/platform relationship. In the first phase of the project, we will run a Delphi Method study to determine the broad expert perspective on what the crucial elements of user technical literacy are in the context of online safety, especially as it concerns users’ ability to share responsibility for online safety and technical interventions to support shared responsibility. Ultimately, we will synthesize existing work on user technical literacy and theorization with expert stakeholder perspectives on technical, regulatory, and other practical realities of running distributed, large-scale sociotechnical systems. In phase two, we will run user focus groups with marginalized communities to match expert consensus with the lived reality of users. 

Co-Op Responsibilities
Co-Op research associates will be responsible for directly aiding in the execution of lab research projects, especially our Delphi method study with experts across multiple areas of online/distributed technology. Duties will include a combination of managing participant scheduling/communication, interviewing and interacting with participants, moderating our online research space, conducting background literature searches, and compiling/analyzing qualitative and participatory project data. Additionally, research associates are responsible for basic lab duties such as attending lab meetings, giving feedback to other lab members, and contributing to project recruitment. Extensive mentoring will be provided by the lab director around all these duties.

Co-Op Student Qualifications
No specific coursework or technical skill is required for this position, but prior experience (formal or informal) with interviewing, scheduling, and/or community moderation/organization is a plus. Due to the fact that the lab works directly with human subjects on all projects, the selected student must complete the online CITI Human Subjects Protection training for Social and Behavioral Research Investigators module before the start of the co-op.

As major social platforms change (e.g., the transformation of Twitter into X and accompanying shifts in policy, enforcement, and features), the marginalized communities that rely on these platforms for connection, information, and aid are often negatively impacted and even entirely disbanded due to these shifts. Marginalized people who are experienced at using technical and social skills to avoid harassment, abuse, and unfairly targeted content moderation must deal with new threats related to lapses in policy enforcement, such as the rise of weaponized, targeted context collapse to encourage brigading, doxing, and false reporting campaigns. Despite these challenges, some marginalized communities persist on these platforms far longer than others. The Sociotechnical Equity and Agency Lab is conducting research to better understand how those who stay manage to balance resistance with functionality while keeping themselves safe, especially in terms of potentially replicable and scalable technical solutions these resilient users employ. We will be approaching these questions through a new study design that hybridizes interviews, social media data analysis, network analysis, and online community discussion in order to provide in-depth qualitative and technical data which we can use to design tools that aid marginalized users in resisting harmful platform changes.

Co-Op Responsibilities
Co-Op research associates will be responsible for directly aiding in the execution of lab research projects, especially our ongoing investigations of weaponized context collapse and user resistance/persistence in the face of platform degradation and collapse. Duties will include a combination of managing participant scheduling/communication, interviewing and interacting with participants, collecting and analyzing social media data, conducting background literature searches, and compiling/analyzing qualitative and participatory project data. Additionally, research associates are responsible for basic lab duties such as attending lab meetings, giving feedback to other lab members, and contributing to project recruitment. Extensive mentoring will be provided by the lab director around all these duties.

Co-Op Student Qualifications
No specific coursework or technical skill is required for this position, but prior experience with social media analysis and/or network analysis is a plus. We are also highly interested in applicants who have prior experience with and involvement in online community spaces for marginalized groups, as well as those with prior experience in interviewing, scheduling, and/or community moderation. Due to the fact that the lab works directly with human subjects on all projects, the selected student must complete the online CITI Human Subjects Protection training for Social and Behavioral Research Investigators module before the start of the co-op.