Social Justice in HCI: A Systematic Literature Review

Title of the Paper

Social Justice in HCI: A Systematic Literature Review

Paper Information

• Research Domain: Social justice and related studies within the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
• Keywords: Social justice, harm, welfare, oppression, marginalization, resistance, positionality, systemic, structural, reflexivity, activism

Research Background and Issues

• Identified Problems or Challenges:

  • The HCI field lacks a shared and clear understanding of how to work towards social justice goals.
  • Current research focuses more on harm than on welfare, with limited exploration of how intersecting identities influence social justice issues.
  • While social justice topics are widely discussed in HCI research, much of it remains fragmented and incoherent, lacking interdisciplinary collective action.

• Significance:

  • As technology becomes increasingly pervasive, it embeds and reproduces existing power structures and oppressive relationships in society, making social justice a necessary and critical research direction in HCI.
  • Understanding how technology impacts individuals and communities at different levels can aid in designing more equitable socio-technical solutions.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:

  • From Participatory Design to Value Sensitive Design, the HCI field has actively addressed issues of fairness and inclusivity in design across different eras.
  • Since the 2010s, HCI has explicitly adopted a social justice orientation, such as transformative justice and disability justice.
  • Through a systematic literature review, the authors aim to present the current state of social justice research in HCI and provide directions for future action.

Solution

• Proposed Method:

  • Systematic literature review: Reviewing 124 papers related to social justice published between 2009 and 2022.
  • Analytical framework includes five key considerations: harm and welfare, who is harmed and who benefits, sources of harm and welfare, sites of intervention, and intervention tools.

• Innovations:

  • Proposed a classification method based on types of harm (e.g., physical harm, psychological harm, cultural harm) and three primary intervention sites (individual, community, system-level) to frame how HCI research understands and achieves social justice.
  • Summarized tools for advancing equitable processes, such as reflexivity, self-disclosure, direct support, and the use of justice-oriented research frameworks.

• Implementation Steps and Key Techniques:

  1. Literature Collection and Screening: Using keyword searches (e.g., "social justice," "design justice") to gather relevant literature.
  2. Coding and Analysis: Conducting three rounds of coding to analyze the literature and extract data on harm, welfare, tools, and research methods.
  3. Classification Using Framework: Employing reflexive thematic analysis and harm classification tools.
  4. Summarizing Key Findings and Proposing Research Recommendations: Discussing the current state of research and future directions, providing specific suggestions to help the HCI community move towards a more equitable future.

Research Findings

• Specific Outcomes:

  • Mapped the landscape of social justice research in HCI, covering research topics, methods, domains, and types of publications.
  • Proposed five key considerations to help researchers reflect on how to better advance social justice from the perspectives of frameworks, tools, and domains.

• Strengths:

  • Comprehensive summary of existing research, covering multiple HCI subfields.
  • Offers a novel perspective combining theory and practice, emphasizing direct support for social justice within research processes.

• Experimental or Evaluation Results:

  • Identified key research areas in HCI that remain underexplored (e.g., cultural harm and environmental harm).
  • Suggested greater focus on intersecting identities, uneven distribution of welfare, and opportunities for framing social justice issues.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • Limitations:
    • The study primarily focuses on specific publications and conferences, potentially overlooking other valuable contributions.
    • Certain types of harm (e.g., environmental harm) are not sufficiently discussed.
  • Future Directions:
    • Call for deeper exploration of the relationship between technology and intersecting identities.
    • Emphasize the need to shift from "responding to injustice" to "actively pursuing justice," focusing design practices on building equitable and intentional futures.
    • Encourage attention to environmental harm related to non-human ecosystems and the development of suitable theoretical frameworks to better understand the impact of technology on social justice.

This review provides social justice researchers in the HCI field with a clear theoretical framework and meaningful practical tools, while offering specific research recommendations to better drive social change.