What would be a sustainable and inclusive approach to child safety online? Today at the Berkman Center, Mitali Thakor presented her research on human trafficking and moderated a discussion of how we see and respond to issues of child safety. Mitali Thakor is a PhD student at MIT's history and science of technology program, who studies …

Continue reading Imagining a Sustainable and Inclusive Approach to Child Safety Online

Today at the Berkman Center, our summer PhD Interns gave a series of short talks describing our research and asking for feedback from the Berkman community. This liveblog summarizes the talks and the Q&A (special thanks to Willow Brugh for collaborating on this post). Mary Gray, senior researcher at Microsoft Research, opened up the conversation …

Continue reading The Quantified Self; Newsfeed: Created by you?; Holding Crowds Accountable To The Public; EVE Online and World of Darkness

What does it take to keep online communities going? With over 550,000 public subreddits, many of which are active, the communities on the site rely on ongoing effort by a large number of volunteer moderators. In my research, I'm excited to learn more from redditors how they see the work of moderation and why they do it.