Opportunities, Tensions, and Challenges in Computational Approaches to Addressing Online Harassment

Given the scale at which online harassment occurs, researchers and practitioners alike have turned to computationally driven approaches to address it. However, because harassment is highly contextual and personal, designing efective solutions to this problem can be extremely challenging. This paper examines how harassment-mitigation systems studied in human-computer interaction (HCI) consider victim-centered principles in their design. Through a scoping literature review and close reading of 17 papers, we contribute—(1) a characterization of how novel and existing systems consider victims’ identity characteristics, defnitions of harassment, and preferred strategies for dealing with harassment; (2) challenges faced by the systems along these dimensions to surface limitations, gaps, and tensions; (3) practical recommendations for researchers, designers, and practitioners to overcome these challenges. In doing so, we ofer potential new directions to positively design computational approaches to addressing online harassment with victim-centered principles in mind.