Jacob Erickson
Jacob Erickson is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Vassar College. His research explores how digital platforms shape sociopolitical discourse, focusing on platform governance, online safety, and the downstream impacts of design and moderation decisions. Drawing from human-computer interaction, data science, and computational social science, his work examines how platform affordances influence online communication, community behavior, and user trust. His research contributes to ongoing debates about digital safety, regulatory design, and the future of online communities.
Research and Academic Interests
- Platform Governance
- Trust & Safety
- Computational Social Science
- Social Computing
- Digital Discourse
Departments and Programs
Courses
CMPU 100—Programming with Data
CMPU 101—Problem-Solving and Abstraction
CMPU 241—Analysis of Algorithms
Selected Publications
- Erickson, Jacob. (2025). Fake Friends and Sponsored Ads: The Risks of Advertising in Conversational Search. Proceedings of the 7th ACM Conference on Conversational User Interfaces (CUI 2025). Best Paper (Provocations Track).
- Erickson, Jacob., Yan B. (2025). Content Moderation and Hate Speech on Alternative Platforms: A Case Study of BitChute. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (PACM HCI).
- Erickson Jacob., Yan B. (2024). Affective Design: The Influence of Facebook Reactions on the Emotional Expression of the 114th US Congress. Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2024).
- Erickson, Jacob. (2024). Rethinking the filter bubble? Developing a research agenda for the protective filter bubble. Big Data & Society, 11(1), 20539517241231276.
- Erickson, Jacob., Yuzon, J. Y., & Bonaci, T. (2022). What You Do Not Expect When You Are Expecting: Privacy Analysis of Femtech. IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society, 3(2), 121-131.
In the Media
Photos
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