Hi! My name is Cici Ling. ︎︎


I study online abusive behavior in multi-modal, across multi-platforms, using a mixed-method approach to provide mitigitation.










News !!


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2020.03.06
I passed my prospectus defense :)

I am presenting our work on meme’s virality @CSCW 2021. 

I am invited by PengPai Podcast to give a talk on on the relationship between prejudice and categorical thinking in morden daliy life.

I am taking over @BUComputing Twitter account to share my research and Ph.D. life.

I am going present our work A First Look at Zoombombing @IEEE SP 2021.

I am invited to Friday Power Lunch to share my research on Zoombombing.

I am selected as Hariri Graduate Student Fellow. 

My translated book Midnight in Broad Daylight: a Japanese American family caught between two worlds. is now published in China.

I received fellowship from Max Planck Institute as a visiting scholar this summer! I will work with Prof. Anja Feldmann and Dr. Savvas Zannettou.

I am invited by The Hmms at IMPAKT to give a talk on Dissecting the Meme Magic: Understanding Indicators of Virality in Image Memes.

Inside Higher Ed writes an article on our research of zoombombing, pointing out most of zoombombing are insiders' job.

Washington Post mentions our research of sinophobia, discussing disinformation about China during Covid 19.

ArsTechnica writes an article on our research of zoombombing, arguing password-protecting meeting is the most ineffective protections.

Wired writes an article on our research of zoombombing, highlighting why insiders of zoombombing are so hard to stop. 

BU The Brink writes an article on our research of memes, revealing how the top characteristics that make memes go viral. 

Prof. Gianluca Stringhini and I talked to Input Magazine and explained how photoshopped images become viral on the Web.

Our paper, Dissecting the Meme Magic: Understanding Indicators of Virality in Image Memes, is accepted @ACM CSCW 2021.
Our research shows that memes obey to the same rules of successful visual artworks.


Our paper, " go eat a bat, chang!": An early look on the emergence of sinophobic behavior on web communities in the face of covid-19, is accepted @WWW 2021.

Our paper, A First Look at Zoombombing, is accepted @IEEE SP 2021.
We find that most attacks target online classes and are called from insider.

I have an interview with The Paper on the relationship between prejudice and categorical thinking in morden daliy life.

The Nature of Prejudice has been on the 2nd place of the most recommended book list of Douban for 4 weeks.
The average user rating is 9.1 out of 10.

New Scientist writes an article on our research on zoombombing, explaining how zoombombing is coordinated by whom.

My translated book, The Nature of Prejudice, is published in Mainland of China. 
The first systematically work on discrimination by Gordon Allport, the former Chair of Psychology Dept, Harvard University. 
Great thanks to his successor, Prof. Mahzarin Banaji, for writing the preface of the book.

Our paper, Examining the Impact of Social Distance on the Reaction to a Tragedy A Case Study on Sulli’s Death, is accepted and presented@International Workshop on Cyber Social Threats (CySoc).

Our study of the emergence of Sinophobic behavior on the Web during the COVID-19 pandemic is reported by The Washington Post.

I am officially a Ph.D. candidate now :)

About me 

I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Boston University.
I received my M.S. in Computer Science at UIUC and my B.A. in Art History at Tsinghua University.

I am broadly interested in the areas of security, privacy, and computational social science.
My research is supported by Meta, and Hariri Graduate Student Fellowship at BU.

Mark