By Matt Hazenbush, Director of Communications and Member Engagement
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) has released a new visioning report, Supporting At-Risk Users Through Responsible Computing, synthesizing insights from the December 2024 CCC Visioning Workshop. The report presents a detailed research roadmap for advancing responsible computing practices that better protect individuals who face heightened exposure to technology-facilitated harm.
The workshop convened 49 researchers and practitioners from academia, industry, and civil society who work directly on issues such as cyberstalking, online harassment, digital exploitation, and related technology-enabled risks. Their discussions focused on articulating the frameworks, methodological gaps, and structural challenges that must be addressed to build a more rigorous and coordinated research agenda in this space.
A Research Agenda Grounded in Sociotechnical Insight
Participants emphasized that technology-facilitated harm cannot be addressed by technical interventions alone. Effective solutions require integrating sociotechnical methods, developing shared conceptual tools, and strengthening the supporting research infrastructure.
A central contribution of the report is the compilation of existing frameworks, taxonomies, and theories used across disciplines to study at-risk technology users. These include implementation science frameworks, threat-modeling strategies, ecological and community-based theories, and qualitative and ethnographic approaches that illuminate real-world technology risks. The report highlights opportunities to refine these tools, identify when not to intervene, and expand methodological rigor in sensitive research contexts.
Building Research Capacity and Infrastructure
The report outlines several near-term priorities for strengthening research capacity, including:
- Creating a dynamic repository of frameworks, case studies, and evaluation tools to support safe and responsible research practices.
- Establishing an interdisciplinary advisory board that can provide expert input to researchers, technologists, and policymakers working on high-risk digital safety challenges.
- Supporting researcher well-being and safety, including clearer guidance on risk assessment, threat modeling, and navigating the unique professional challenges of working with sensitive topics.
- Developing shared resources and training, with attention to structural factors that shape research outcomes and the responsibilities associated with studying high-risk environments.
These efforts aim to reduce fragmentation in the field and enable researchers to adopt more consistent practices for studying and supporting at-risk users.
Longer-Term Structural Needs
Participants also identified several longer-term issues that require sustained attention from the computing research community and its institutional partners:
- Broadening funding models to support interdisciplinary collaborations and partnerships with organizations that work directly with affected populations.
- Creating mechanisms for translating research insights into policy and practice, including repositories of policy-relevant findings and examples of successful research–policy pathways.
- Updating grant and publication review processes to include structured assessments of risk and potential unintended consequences.
- Enhancing institutional incentive structures so that work with policy implications, stakeholder engagement, and community collaboration is recognized within academic evaluation systems.
Taken together, these recommendations outline a coordinated agenda for maturing the research ecosystem and supporting responsible innovation.
Read the Full Report
The full report, Supporting At-Risk Users Through Responsible Computing, is available on the CCC website and includes detailed goals, action items, and references for researchers seeking to advance this growing area of responsible computing.
