Most research on cyberbullying looks at aggressors and victims. This project looks at everybody else — the bystanders, who are the majority of any audience and who almost always have the power to change what happens next.
The core finding the lab keeps returning to is that intervention is a design question, not only a character question. Interface choices that make accountability and empathy visible measurably change how likely people are to step in. So does the visibility of the moderator: whether a human or an AI flagged a post changes how the audience reads both the post and the system. And which objection strategy someone uses changes whether the audience approves of them for objecting at all.
Work here runs through the Truman Platform and SocialSim, and extends into adolescent peer conflict before it escalates, safety nudges evaluated without deceiving the teenagers being studied, and the role of pseudonymity and verification friction in spaces where people discuss sensitive things.
Themes across projects
- Philosophical and ethical questions around trustAlso in Misinformation & Community Norms, AI-Mediated Communication
- Design choices that make a system caring, or fail toAlso in Platform Care Work
- Areas that demand low false-positives and low false-negatives, which are not interchangeableAlso in Misinformation & Community Norms
- Methodological pluralism — questions shape methods, not dogmaShared by every project
Publications
Published
- 2021
Do you care who flagged this post? Effects of moderator visibility on bystander behavior
Bhandari, Ozanne, Bazarova & DiFranzo · Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 26(5), 284–300
- 2022
Shall AI moderators be made visible? Perception of accountability and trust in moderation systems on social media platforms
Ozanne, Bhandari, Bazarova & DiFranzo · Big Data & Society 9(2)
- 2024
Standing up to problematic content on social media: which objection strategies draw the audience’s approval?
Zhao, Bazarova, DiFranzo, Hui, Kizilcec & Margolin · Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 29(1), zmad046
- 2025
Young people are willing to intervene against rape myths online: a simulated social media experiment
Nicolla, McKenzie, Lazard, DiFranzo, Aghajari, Mao & Dasgupta · Journal of Adolescent Health 76(5), 839–846
- 2025
Independently testing prosocial interventions: methods and recommendations from 31 researchers
Grüning, Kamin, Saltz, Acosta, DiFranzo, Goldberg, Leavitt, Menczer, Musgrave, Wang & Wojcieszak · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1550(1), 108–121
- 2019
Accountability and empathy by design: encouraging bystander intervention to cyberbullying on social media
Taylor, DiFranzo, Choi, Sannon & Bazarova · PACM HCI 3(CSCW)
- 2024
Tricky vs. transparent: toward an ecologically valid and safe approach for evaluating online safety nudges for teens
Agha, Park, Wan, Ali, Wang, DiFranzo, Badillo-Urquiola & Wisniewski · CHI 2024
- 2026
Designing for safety in sensitive online spaces: the role of pseudonymity and verification friction
Gallagher, Shi & DiFranzo · ACM Web Science 2026, 381–391
Workshops & extended abstracts
- 2026
Pathway Lab: a design probe for redirecting adolescent peer conflict before it becomes bullying
Shi & DiFranzo · CSCW 2026 Companion (Posters) · conditionally accepted