me
Postdoctoral Researcher @ CMU HCII
Email: xiaosijia [at] cmu (dot) edu
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News

Jan 2025
My paper "SnuggleSense: Empowering Online Harm Survivors Through a Structured Sensemaking Process" has been accepted by CSCW 2025.

Sep 2024
My research on online conspiracy theories was cited in a New York Times article.

I also gave an interview with UC Berkeley News, discussing my work on applying restorative justice to addressing online interpersonal harm. News here: How UC Berkeley researchers are making online spaces safer for all

May 2024
Attended graduation at UC Berkeley. Starting September, I will be a postdoctal researcher at Human-Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon University.

March 2024
CNN published a news article about my research on conspiracy theories. Check it out!

Hi! I'm Sijia Xiao, a postdoctoral researcher at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII), Carnegie Mellon University, working with Prof. Motahhare Eslami . I completed my PhD at the School of Information, UC Berkeley, under the guidance of Prof. Niloufar Salehi and Coye Cheshire.

I am a human-computer interaction (HCI) and social computing researcher. My work focuses on empowering everyday users to address harms induced by technology, particularly on social media platforms. I study various types of harm, including AI and algorithmic bias, interpersonal harm, and misinformation.

My methodologies include interviews, design, and system building, and I apply social and justice theories (e.g., sensemaking theory and restorative justice) to help interpret these issues. My goal is to create design processes, social computing systems, and policies that enable survivor-centered, multi-stakeholder approaches to addressing online harm.


Publications

SnuggleSense: Empowering Online Harm Survivors Through a Structured Sensemaking Process
Xiao, Sijia, Haodi Zou, Amy Mathews, Jingshu Rui, Coye Cheshire, and Niloufar Salehi. CSCW 2025.

Addressing Interpersonal Harm in Online Gaming Communities: The Opportunities and Challenges for a Restorative Justice Approach.
Xiao, Sijia, Shagun Jhaver, and Niloufar Salehi. TOCHI 2023.
[paper]

Sensemaking, Support, Safety, Retribution, Transformation: A Restorative Justice Approach to Understanding Adolescents’ Needs for Addressing Online Harm.
Xiao, Sijia, Coye Cheshire, and Niloufar Salehi. CHI 2022.
[paper] [presentation video] [Twitter thread]

Sensemaking and the Chemtrail Conspiracy on the Internet: Insights from Believers and Ex-believers.
Xiao, Sijia, Coye Cheshire, and Amy Bruckman. CSCW 2021.
[paper] [presentation video] [CNN] [BBC] [12News]

Random, Messy, Funny, Raw: Finstas as Intimate Reconfigurations of Social Media.
Xiao, Sijia, Danaë Metaxa, Joon Sung Park, Karrie Karahalios, and Niloufar Salehi. CHI 2020. Best Paper Honorable Mention (%5)
[paper] [presentation video]

ConsensUs: Supporting Multi-Criteria Group Decisions by Visualizing Points of Disagreement.
Liu, Weichen, Sijia Xiao, Jacob T. Browne, Ming Yang, and Steven P. Dow. ACM Transactions on Social Computing 2018.
[paper]

ConsensUs: Visualizing Points of Disagreement for Multi-Criteria Collaborative Decision Making.
Mahyar, Narges, Weichen Liu, Sijia Xiao, Jacob Browne, Ming Yang, and Steven P. Dow. CSCW Companion 2017.
[paper]