Dr Carolina Are

Innovation Fellow

Department: Psychology

Dr. Carolina Are is an Innovation Fellow researching on the intersection between online abuse and censorship. Her research on social media moderation, platform governance and algorithm bias has been published in Porn Studies, First Monday, Journalism and Feminist Media Studies, in which she authored the first academic study on the shadowbanning of pole dancing. Dr Are's work has been featured in the BBC, MIT Technology Review, Business Insider, Vice, Wired and Mashable, as well as in a series of bestselling books. She is also a blogger and creator herself, as well as a writer, pole dance instructor and award-winning activist.

Dr Carolina Are's first ongoing project at the CDC investigates Instagram and TikTok’s approach to malicious flagging against ‘grey area’ content, or content that toes the line of compliance with social media’s community guidelines. In absence of social media platforms’ communications or transparency about their moderation processes, her two-year study aims to infer Instagram and TikTok’s approach to moderating grey area content by focusing on user experience.

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Key Publications

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
"Dialing it Back:" Shadowbanning, Invisible Digital Labor, and how Marginalized Content Creators Attempt to Mitigate the Impacts of Opaque Platform Governance, Kojah, S., Zhang, B., Are, C., Delmonaco, D., Haimson, O. 10 Jan 2025, In: The Proceedings of the ACM on Human Computer Interaction (HCI)
Platform gaslighting: A user-centric insight into social media corporate communications of content moderation, Divon, T., Are, C., Briggs, P. 16 Jan 2025, In: Platforms & Society
Pole dancing academic: Decompartmentalizing the personal, sexual, and professional while blending pole dance and research careers, Are, C. 1 May 2025, Sex on Stage, London, United Kingdom, Bloomsbury
Post-social media: de-platformed users’ challenges to belong in ‘corpo-civic’ spaces, Are, C., Briggs, P. 13 May 2025, In: Convergence
Algorithmic folk theories and peer review: on the importance of valuing participant expertise (commentary), Are, C. 17 Jul 2024, In: Journal of Gender Studies
‘Dysfunctional’ appeals and failures of algorithmic justice in Instagram and TikTok content moderation, Are, C. 30 Aug 2024, In: Information Communication and Society
Flagging as a silencing tool, Are, C. 12 Feb 2024, In: New Media and Society
Researching under the platform gaze: rethinking the challenges of platform governance research, Are, C. 27 Sep 2024, In: Platforms & Society
Social media affordances of LGBTQIA+ expression and community formation, Are, C., Talbot, C., Briggs, P. 31 Oct 2024, In: Convergence
Strategic Invisibility: How Creators Manage the Risks and Constraints of Online Hyper(In)Visibility, Stegeman, H., Are, C., Poell, T. Apr 2024, In: Social Media and Society

Professional Activity

Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
Invited talk: The UNSEEN 2022
Invited talk: Autoethnographies of 'automated powerlessness' in Instagram and TikTok account deletions 2022
Invited talk: Autoethnographies of 'automated powerlessness' in Instagram and TikTok account deletions 2022
Invited talk: Autoethnographies of 'automated powerlessness' in Instagram and TikTok account deletions 2022
Invited talk: MozFest 2021 2021
Invited talk: Algorithms For Her 2020
Invited talk: When online abuse and conspiracy theories collide 2019
Invited talk: The Politics and Ethics of Social Media Trolling Research: Challenges and New Frameworks 2018