A SURVEY ON INTERVENTION FOR ONLINE AGGRESSION: RESEARCH LANDSCAPE, DESIGN MECHANISM AND EVALUATION

PhD Qualifying Examination


Title: "A SURVEY ON INTERVENTION FOR ONLINE AGGRESSION: RESEARCH LANDSCAPE,
DESIGN MECHANISM AND EVALUATION"

by

Mr. Kangyu YUAN


Abstract:

Online interactions increasingly expose users to cyberbullying and other forms of
online aggression, harming psychological well-being and participation. While many
interventions exist, design-focused synthesis remains limited regarding what has been
built, why it may work, and how it is evaluated. This paper conducts a design- and
intervention-centered systematic review and structured synthesis, organizing
interventions by stage (generation, propagation, observation), stakeholder role
(victims, bystanders, aggressors, moderation/platform), and intended mechanisms. We
reveal pronounced imbalances in stage coverage and responsibility allocation: prior
work largely targets propagation and post hoc handling, often via victim-facing tools
and platform governance. This emphasis enables short-term visibility reduction and
efficiency gains, but less often addresses generation-side drivers or post-incident
recovery, and may shift safety labor and risk across roles. We advance a "deep
intervention" perspective that treats mediating mechanisms as shared targets of design
and evaluation, and argue for intervention configurations that achieve mechanism
closure. Finally, we call for mechanism-oriented, longitudinal, and auditable
evaluations to assess sustainability and institutional side effects.


Date:                   Thursday, 5 March 2026

Time:                   10:00am - 12:00pm

Venue:                  Room 2132C
                        Lift 19

Committee Members:      Dr. Xiaojuan Ma (Supervisor)
                        Dr. Arpit Narechania (Chairperson)
                        Dr. Xiaomin Ouyang