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Defining Digital Self-Harm

Published: 25 February 2017 Publication History
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  • Abstract

    Self-harm is the infliction of pain or injury onto oneself. Though historically these behaviors were relegated to the fringes of communities, information technology now enables new ways to foster and encourage these dangerous activities. This paper defines the concept of digital self-harm as the online communication and activity that leads to, supports, or exacerbates, non-suicidal yet intentional harm or impairment of an individual's physical wellbeing. We outline a research agenda for the CSCW community to understand the correlation and possible causation of offline self-harm behaviors due to online activities, and to design and assess technologies focused on prevention, mitigation and treatment. CAUTION: This paper includes media that could potentially be triggering to those dealing with an eating disorder or with other self-harm related illnesses. Please use caution when reading or disseminating this paper.

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    Cited By

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      cover image ACM Conferences
      CSCW '17: Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
      February 2017
      2556 pages
      ISBN:9781450343350
      DOI:10.1145/2998181
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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      Publication History

      Published: 25 February 2017

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      Author Tags

      1. behavioral health
      2. computer-mediated communication
      3. cutting
      4. digital self-harm
      5. health
      6. mental health
      7. pro-ana
      8. pro-mia
      9. self-harm
      10. self-injury
      11. social computing
      12. social media
      13. thinspiration

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      CSCW '17: Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
      February 25 - March 1, 2017
      Oregon, Portland, USA

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      CSCW '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 183 of 530 submissions, 35%;
      Overall Acceptance Rate 2,235 of 8,521 submissions, 26%

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      • (2024)Functionality and User Review Analysis of Mobile Apps for Mindfulness Eating and Eating DisordersProceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference10.1145/3643834.3661521(1350-1371)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
      • (2024)The Hidden Burden: Encountering and Managing (Unintended) Stigma in Children with Serious IllnessesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36410218:CSCW1(1-35)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
      • (2024)Toward Trauma-Informed Research Practices with Youth in HCI: Caring for Participants and Research Assistants When Studying Sensitive TopicsProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36374118:CSCW1(1-31)Online publication date: 26-Apr-2024
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      • (2023)Co-creating a Transdisciplinary Map of Technology-mediated Harms, Risks and Vulnerabilities: Challenges, Ambivalences and OpportunitiesProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36101797:CSCW2(1-21)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
      • (2023)User-Centered Design for Nonsuicidal Self-Injury Information on TikTok: A Study of Users' Motivations and Circumnavigation of Algorithmic BarriersCompanion Publication of the 2023 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing10.1145/3584931.3608916(421-424)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2023
      • (2023)Achieving Digital Wellbeing Through Digital Self-control Tools: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysisACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction10.1145/357181030:4(1-66)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2023
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