Jasmine C. Foriest
PhD Student in Human-Centered Computing
School of Interactive Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
www.jcforiest.com

Date: Tuesday, January 20th, 2026
Location: Spark Lab 222, TSRB
Zoom: Foriest Proposal Zoom Link
Time: 2:00PM - 5:00PM EST

Committee:
Dr. Amy S. Bruckman (Advisor/Chair)
School of Interactive Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Andrea G. Parker
School of Interactive Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology

Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University
Morehouse School of Medicine

Dr. Beki Grinter
School of Interactive Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Tiffany C. Veinot
School of Information and School of Public Health
University of Michigan

Dr. Nicki Dell
College of Computing and Information Science
Cornell Tech

Summary:
Digital technologies indisputably mediate and amplify real-world social outcomes, like violence, in novel ways. However, HCI is constrained in its current approaches to characterize and remediate these outcomes, often due to their sometimes latent, structural, and embedded nature in both society and technology. One such hidden harm that precedes violent outcomes is muting—the systematic silencing of non-dominant groups from venues of discourse where identity, reality, and social change are constructed. Drawing on Muted Group Theory, this dissertation demonstrates that digital muting constitutes a type of tech-mediated violence that obstructs help-seeking behavior and access to epistemic resources essential for violence prevention.

My completed work deconstructs the mechanisms of removal, replication, and reconstruction through which digital artifacts mediate muting as violence. I describe the [removal] of information in mass media’s digital representation of suicide creates informational barriers that obstruct help-seeking for at-risk populations. I characterize the [replication] of silencing social dynamics in how online community design enables the systematic silencing of gender-based violence survivors. I observe the mechanism of [reconstruction] of prejudice and partial knowledge in the ways large language models perpetuate epistemic injustice for survivors of intimate partner violence. These studies reveal how digital artifacts both constrain and enable support for those experiencing violence. Critically, a tension threads through all three empirical chapters: the very interventions designed to address harm often perpetuate new forms of silencing.

My proposed work extends these empirical findings by examining remediation itself as a mechanism of muting. Through systematic qualitative content analysis of help-seeking and disclosure literature across computing, criminology, law, public health, and communications, this study investigates how interventions designed to address harm may perpetuate new forms of silencing. By exploring (1) how current problems result from previous remediation attempts, (2) what solutions are proposed and who is positioned as responsible, and (3) how remediation is linguistically constructed across disciplines, this work explores whether the tension observed in Chapters 3-5 represents a broader pattern operating across different contexts -- remediation as muting. This analysis aims to provide critical reflection necessary for HCI to pursue remediation in ways that do not reproduce the structural violence it seeks to prevent, ultimately informing more thoughtful, harm-aware, and cross-disciplinary approaches to addressing technology-mediated violence.