Casey Fiesler is an assistant professor in the Department of Information Science (and Computer Science, by courtesy) at the University of Colorado Boulder.  Armed with a PhD in Human-Centered Computing from Georgia Tech and a JD from Vanderbilt Law School, she primarily researches social computing, ethics, law, and fan communities (occasionally all at the same time). [curriculum vitae]

Here is a link to my research lab page! The Internet Rules Lab

If you’re looking for a giant spreadsheet of tech ethics curricula, here!
If you’re looking for my Computer Engineer Barbie remix, here!
For an overview of my tech ethics-related research, here!
For an overview of my fandom-related research, here!

NEWS

09.17.20  I wrote for Slate about American Girl’s new 80s coder doll, in the context of the history of women in computing.

09.16.20  PhD student Natalie Garrett and I co-authored an op-ed for WIRED: “Ethical Tech Starts with Addressing Ethical Debt.”

09.08.20 I gave a talk for the University of British Columbia Designing for People seminar series.

09.02.20 I recently started a YouTube channel, largely focused on academic advice, but will also be making some research-based video essays, like this one about zoombombing and ethical debt.

08.28.20 I gave the opening keynote at the CU Denver Data Science Symposium.

08.25.20 I was quoted in a Washington Post article about the current challenges of volunteer content moderation.

08.10.20  I’ve agreed to be general co-chair for CSCW 2023, which will be held in October 2023 in Minneapolis, MN!

08.05.20  Two papers with PhD student Brianna Dym will be published in Proceedings of the ACM and presented at CSCW 2020: “Moving Across Lands: Online Platform Migration in Fandom Communities” and “Social Norm Vulnerability and its Consequences for Privacy and Safety in an Online Community.”

07.23.20  I spoke to Vice about the fair use implications of an AI-created parody that received a copyright takendown.

06.30.20 With collaborator Corian Zacher, I wrote a piece for Authors Alliance about the recent DMCA 512 Copyright Office report, and our ongoing research around DMCA impacts on fan creators.

06.24.20 I was quoted (and my research with Brianna Dym cited) in a Teen Vogue article about political activism in fandom.

06.22.20 I was quoted in a OneZero article (with coverage of our CSCW 2019 Discord paper) about content moderation and voice tweets.

06.08.22 ICWSM 2020 was virtual, but I presented our paper “No Robots, Spiders, or Scrapers: Legal and Ethical Regulation of Data Collection Methods in Social Media Terms of Service” [blog post] and also co-organized a workshop on social media research ethics.

04.27.20 I was quoted in a PC Mag article about content licensing on Twitter.

04.26.20 Though CHI 2020 was canceled, my paper “Lawful Users: Copyright Circumvention and Legal Constraints on Technology Use” has been published! In addition to this paper, my students and I also had position papers in multiple workshops, some of which are still happening virtually. These position papers include: “Exploring Racial Diversity and Researcher Positionality in Ethical HCI Research”
(Shamika Goddard, Workshop on Engaging Race in HCI), “Exploring User Opinions of Fairness in Recommender Systems” (Jess Smith, Nasim Sonboli, Robin Burke, Workshop on Human-Centered Approaches to Fair and Responsible AI), “Avoiding Ethical Debt in UX Design” (Natalie Garrett, Workshop on Creating an Ethical Framework for UX Designers), and “Being “Public” While Vulnerable: Recommendations for Platforms and Researchers “)Workshop on Privacy and Power: Acknowledging the Importance of Privacy Research and Design for Vulnerable Populations)

04.24.20 I was mentioned in a Daily Dot article about Zoom security.

04.03.20 Our paper about research ethics and TOS “No Robots, Spiders, or Scrapers: Legal and Ethical Regulation of Data Collection Methods in Social Media Terms of Service” (with Nathan Beard and Brian Keegan) has been accepted to ICWSM 2020, and I’ve posted a blog post summary of the paper: “Spiders and crawlers and scrapers, oh my! The law and ethics of researchers violating terms of service.”

03.10.20 Though SIGCSE 2020 was canceled, our full paper “What Do We Teach When We Teach Tech Ethics? A Syllabi Analysis” (with Natalie Garrett and Nathan Beard) has been published, along with two posters– “Ethics from the Start: Exploring Student Attitudes and Creating Interventions in Intro Programming Classes” (with Natalie Garrett and Mikhaila Friske) and “Broadening Participation in Computing through Transforming Media and Technologies” (with Brianna Dym)– and a special session I was part of, “Assignments that Blend Ethics and Technology.”

[News Archive]