About Me

Qunfang Wu (Chinese: 武群芳) is a Postdoc Fellow at the Inequality in America Initiative at Harvard University. Before that, she was a postdoctorial researcher under the mentorship of Dr. Deen Freelon at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Qunfang received her Ph.D. in Information Science and Technology from the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, advised by Dr. Bryan Semaan. She earned her B.S. in Information Management and System and M.S. in Information Science from Peking University in 2014 and 2016. She also minored in Economics in the National School of Development at Peking University.

Qunfang’s research lies at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and social justice. She strives to challenge how socio-technical systems enable the construction and propagation of inequalities and advocate for design justice perspectives and practices. Her work has been published in places of the ACM Human-Computer Interaction (CSCW), the ACM Transactions on Social Computing (TSC), the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), and the International Conference on Digital Government Research (DG.O).

Qunfang’s dissertation “Conversations About Crime: Re-Enforcing and Fighting Against Platformed Racism on Reddit” unpacked how Reddit users engaged in discourse frames that both re-enforce and fight against racism, and the interactions and moderation on Reddit were deeply mediated by and through overt and covert racist ideologies. The dissertation advances knowledge about how racism is afforded and constrained in online spaces and puts forth a call to action to disrupt racist design and governance.

News

Join us for the Symposium on Misinformation & Marginalization, taking place at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on October 16, 2023. Paper proposals is due on June 30. [05/30/2023]

I will attend the 2023 CSST Summer Research Institute from June 26-30, 2023 at Estes Park, CO. [04/21/2023]

My co-mentored undergraduate research project, “Understanding Female Entrepreneurs’ Resistance Behaviors in Algorithmic Systems” received the SOURCE Fellowship at Syracuse University. [11/15/2022]

I will teach Storytelling with Data for the IT Girls Program this summer! [06/05/2022]

I have successfully defended my dissertation work! [05/09/2022]

My summer research proposal advised by Dr. EunJeong Cheon, Toward a Design Framework for Digital Equality: A Literature Review of Racialized Socio-Technical Mechanisms in Online Platforms has been funded by iSchool at Syracuse University! [04/05/2022]

Our paper Conversations About Crime: Re-Enforcing and Fighting Against Platformed Racism on Reddit has been accepted to CSCW2022! [LINK] [11/26/2021]