College Access & Social Media

I am broadly interested in how social media interactions may facilitate and/or impede college access, particularly for underrepresented students such as first-generation, low-income students. More specifically, I examine how students engage in self-presentation, self-disclosure, and social comparison and how these processes influence their ability to access and persist in postsecondary institutions.

Publications:

Pyle, C., Ellison, N., & Andalibi, N. (2023). Social Media and College-Related Social Support Exchange for
First-Generation, Low-Income Students: The Role of Identity Disclosures. Forthcoming at ACM’s Conference on
Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW ’23).
Brown, M., Pyle, C., & Ellison, N. B. (2022). “On My Head About It”: College Aspirations, Social Media Participation, and Community Cultural Wealth. Social Media+ Society, 8(2), 20563051221091545.

Projects:

Pre-Candidacy Proposal
Pre-Candidacy Paper
Pre-Candidacy Slides
Field Prelim Exam Paper
Field Prelim Exam Slides

College Access & Algorithms

I investigate how algorithmic systems (broadly construed) influence college access, particularly for underrepresented student populations. Such algorithmic systems include those that underpin the social media platforms that students use to gain information and support around college-going as well as algorithmic systems embedded in higher education institutions, such as in their admissions processes, in student services' office chatbots, and in prediction algorithms that determine which students are "at-risk".

Publications:

Pyle, C., & Andalibi, N. (2021). First-Generation, Low-Income Students as Data Subjects in Higher Education Profiling and Prediction AI/ML Applications.

Marginality, Stigma, and Identity on Social Media & in Algorithmic Systems

Outside of the college access context, I work with a variety of marginalized and stigmatized populations to understand how they use social media and to what ends. Much of this work centers around stigmatized disclosures and identity visibility.

Publications:

Pyle, C.*, Zhang, B. F.*, Haimson, O. L., & Andalibi, N. (2024). “I’m Constantly in This Dilemma”: How Migrant Technology Professionals Perceive Social Media Recommendation Algorithms. To be presented at ACM’s Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW ’24).
Andalibi, N., Pyle, C., Barta, K., Xian, L., Jacobs, A., & Ackerman, M. (2023). Conceptualizing Algorithmic
Stigma. ACM’s Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI ‘23).
Barta, K., Pyle, C., Andalibi, N. (2023). Toward a Feminist Social Media Vulnerability Taxonomy. In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (PACM).
Pyle, C., Roosevelt, L., Lacombe-Duncan, A., & Andalibi, N. (2021, May). LGBTQ Persons' Pregnancy Loss Disclosures to Known Ties on Social Media: Disclosure Decisions and Ideal Disclosure Environments. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-17).