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A headshot of Cassidy Pyle

Cassidy Pyle

Biography

Cassidy Pyle is a rising fourth year Ph.D. student working with Dr. Nicole Ellison and Dr. Nazanin Andalibi. Broadly, her research examines how multiply stigmatized communities use social media platforms and, increasingly, algorithmic systems to access social support, information, and educational/career opportunities.

Previously, she has examined how LGBTQ+ people who experience pregnancy loss make decisions about whether to and how to share these difficult experiences on non-anonymous social media platforms, and how multiply marginalized social media users think about vulnerability on and via social media. Currently, she is working with first-generation, low-income students to understand how they use social media in the college application and selection processes and how social media can be better designed to meet their needs in this pivotal time. She is also working to understand how students perceive college admissions as an algorithmic system.

She has published at CHI, CSCW, Social Media + Society, and Current Opinion in Psychology, and has presented at ICA, CRA-WP, and the Human Computer Interaction Consortium.

CV

Pronouns

she/her

Areas of interest

social media; algorithms; social support; college access; identity; stigma

Honors & Awards

Best Paper Award - CHI 2021
Rackham Merit Fellowship

Education

B.A., University of California, Santa Barbara -- Communication, Film & Media Studies, Feminist Studies

News about Cassidy Pyle

UMSI research roundup. 2023 conference on human factors in computing services (CHI). Check out faculty and PhD student publications.
UMSI at CHI 2023: Research, workshops, courses

Recent UMSI researchers and PhD student publications and workshops for the 2023 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI).

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Graphic of a silhouetted person sitting at a desktop computer appearing contemplative
LGBTQ identity shapes pregnancy loss disclosure decisions on social media

An interdisciplinary team of U-M researchers investigated LGBTQ persons' experiences with pregnancy loss and social media’s role in sharing about it.

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