Research briefs

The Community Data Science Collective publishes short research briefs that synthesize findings from our research for audiences outside academia — especially online community leaders, practitioners, platform designers, and policy makers. Every brief is archived in the CDSC community on Zenodo with a DOI and an open license.

Briefs

CDSC members interested in writing a brief can consult our notes for authors.

Using FLOSS Project Governance to Support Project Activity — Gaughan, Matthew , Aaron Shaw , and Kaylea Champion , 2026.

Free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) projects often rely on governance systems that help organize the work of contributors, but many projects adopt these systems only for appearances. Drawing on prior research and on an analysis of README and CONTRIBUTING files from a large sample of FLOSS projects, this brief identifies ways that project governance can meaningfully support project goals and long-term sustainability.

Chatting with Confidants or Corporation? Privacy Management with AI Companions — Chiu, Hsuen-Chi, Jeremy Foote , and Benjamin Mako Hill , 2026.

This brief summarizes findings from research on how users of AI companionship platforms manage privacy across emotional and institutional boundaries. Emotional intimacy and corporate data practices intersect in human–AI interactions, and the human-like design of AI companions can blur the distinction between interpersonal intimacy and corporate surveillance.

Online Community Resilience: Governing Public Information Goods Under Attack — Kharazian, Zarine , Benjamin Mako Hill , and Aaron Shaw , 2025.

Online communities steward a complex set of public information goods that face urgent threats, including strategic information pollution, governance capture, legitimacy attacks by external actors, and AI-driven disintermediation. This brief considers how online communities can effectively defend information goods in the face of such attacks.

Digital Inequality: Implications for Online Communities and Platforms — Fiers, Floor and Aaron Shaw , 2024.

The Internet presents immense opportunities for education, connection, and community building, but those opportunities are not equally available to all. This brief synthesizes research on the implications of inequalities in digital access and participation for online communities and platforms.

Value of IP Editing in Wikimedia — Benjamin Mako Hill , Kaylea Champion , Aaron Shaw , Jeremy Foote , Nora McDonald, Andrea Forte, Sneha Narayan , and Rachel Greenstadt, 2024.

This brief summarizes research on the value of IP editing in Wikimedia projects. Originally published in 2019, it was released to inform discussion of a proposal to change how contributions from users without accounts are tracked on Wikimedia projects.

Anonymity in Online Communities — Champion, Kaylea , 2022.

Recent research demonstrates the value of anonymity-seeking users in online communities and the opportunities to innovate around anonymity-preserving features. For some people, anonymity is necessary for safety; service providers often treat openness only as a source of risk, but barring anonymity-seekers has its own costs and leaves a segment of users underserved. Anonymity-seekers often behave much like average users (particularly newcomers and casual participants), and sometimes take on unique or high-risk work such as moderating against conspiracy theories.