danah boyd and John Palfrey have a new piece in the Huffington Post about the suicide of Tyler Clementi and the subsequent trial of his roommate Dharun Ravi, which begins this week.  I found the following quote particularly meaningful: 

"Tyler Clementi’s suicide is a tragedy. We should all be horrified that a teenager felt the need to take his life in our society. But in our frustration, we must not prosecute Dharun Ravi before he has had his day in court. We must not be bullies ourselves."

We must not be bullies ourselves.  

We should take care to provide emotional support and education to the young people in our lives, whether they are explicit victims of bullying or not.   

Here's the link to CBS Philly's story about online dating research from Christopher Mascaro, myself, and Sean Goggins: http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/video/6736533-researchers-at-drexel-analyze-online-dating-websites/.

The HICSS 2013 Minitrack titled "Technologically Mediated Relationship  
Creation and Maintenance" that I co-proposed with Christopher Mascaro, Liz Thiry, and Sean Goggins has been accepted!  Find out more here: http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu/hicss_46/TechMediated2.pdf, and keep an eye out for the call for papers, which will come out sometime this February or early March.  I'm looking forward to this process and getting to read all of the papers!

I just found out that a workshop paper coauthored with Melinda Sebastian was accepted to the Identity, Performativity, and HCI Workshop to be held at CHI 2012 on May 6 in Austin, Texas.  

Our paper, "Recommender Systems, Creativity, and Performativity", looks at how a group of young women responded to the idea of technological systems making clothing and dressing recommendations, particularly with regard to how those decisions interact with their identity/identities and creative expression.  

I'm looking forward to seeing lots of folks in Austin and continuing my learning on these topics.  As a side note, Melinda and I will be staying an extra day after the conference, so if you're interested in exploring the town with a native Texan and former Austin resident (I can't wait to get back!), please get in touch.  

Some of the news coverage about online dating research I coauthored with Christopher Mascaro and Sean Goggins:  
The Philadelphia Inquirer: 
http://www.philly.com/philly/health/20120116_Check_Up__Drexel_researchers_look_at_how_online_dating_sit
es_define_success.html
Drexel University's Triangle:
http://thetriangle.org/2012/01/13/ph-d-candidates-study-success-of-online-dating-sites/
Drexel's Press Release:
http://www.drexel.edu/now/news-media/releases/archive/2012/January/iSchool-online-dating-study/

Caitlin MacNeal at Slate has an article discussing a paper from Meyran Boniel-Nissim and Azy Barak, which is currently an advance publication from the journal Psychological Services.  When I saw the title of MacNeal's piece - "How Blogging Can Help Teens Suffering From Anxiety" - I have to admit, my first reaction was along the lines of "that makes a lot of sense" (or slightly more accurately: "duh!").  

Keeping track of one's emotions and journaling seem to be recommended left and right, and to some degree I have some anecdotal experience with the value of stopping and composing my thoughts with regards to emotions.  While I never manage to keep a written diary, I do gain a lot of emotional value from talking or "writing" things out in my head (as well as from watching this video - it gets extra points for the hidden marching band). 

What was especially thought-provoking to me about about the study (the paper is titled "The Therapeutic Value of Adolescents' Blogging About Social–Emotional Difficulties"), is that the "results showed that
participants maintaining a blog significantly improved on all measures. Participants writing about their difficulties in blogs open to responses gained the most" (quote from the study's abstract).  How interesting that being open to commentary could be more effective at helping teens deal with their emotions.  

For me, this also points out how important it is to be available to listen to teens (and provide support through "commentary"), whether that be in person, through a blog, or other social media.  Or, for that matter, any other technology that is coming around the bend.