Sarah Gilbert

Research Director, CAT Lab, Communication

Research Associate, Communication

About

Dr. Sarah Gilbert (she/her/hers) is a research associate Cornell University and Research Manager of the Citizens and Technology Lab. Her work focuses on understanding and designing healthy online communities, studying topics like what influences participation, how people learn in online communities, how volunteer moderators’ labor impacts community governance, and how research in those areas can be done ethically. Prior to joining Cornell, she was a postdoctoral associate at the University of Maryland, College Park and earned her doctorate in Library and Information Studies from the University of British Columbia. Her work has been published in ACM CSCW (PACM-HCI), Social Media + Society, New Media & Society; and Information, Communication & Society, and has been featured in The Atlantic.

Recent Research

Shilton, K., Moss, E., Gilbert, S. A., Bietz, M. J., Fiesler, C., Metcalf, J., ... & Zimmer, M. (2021). Excavating awareness and power in data science: A manifesto for trustworthy pervasive data research. Big Data & Society, 8(2), 20539517211040759.
Gilbert, S., Vitak, J., & Shilton, K. (2021). Measuring Americans’ comfort with research uses of their social media data. Social Media+ Society, 7(3), 20563051211033824.
Proferes, N., Jones, N., Gilbert, S., Fiesler, C., & Zimmer, M. (2021). Studying reddit: A systematic overview of disciplines, approaches, methods, and ethics. Social Media+ Society, 7(2), 20563051211019004.
Palacin, V., Gilbert, S., Orchard, S., Eaton, A., Ferrario, M. A., & Happonen, A. (2020). Drivers of participation in digital citizen science: Case Studies on Järviwiki and safecast. Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, 5(1).
Gilbert, S. A. (2020). " I run the world's largest historical outreach project and it's on a cesspool of a website." Moderating a Public Scholarship Site on Reddit: A Case Study of r/AskHistorians. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 4(CSCW1), 1-27.

Contact Information

sag284 [at] cornell.edu

Sarah in the news

women stands in front of Washington Monument

News

April 9, 2024

COMM Updates - 4/9/2024

Conferences Associate Professor Dawn Schrader is organizing and chairing a conference session for the annual American Association for Educational Research conference. She will chair the Moral Development and Education Special Interest Group’s...

News

March 26, 2024

COMM Updates - 3/26/2024

Lectures On March 15, 2024, Professor Bruce Lewenstein delivered the inaugural lecture for Northeastern University’s Public Engagement with Science Hub, entitled “The Past, Present, and Future of Public Engagement with Science.” Bruce provided a...