Hanlin Li (李函霖) 🤘

Bio
Hanlin Li is an assistant professor in the School of Information at UT Austin. Her research aims to inform policy and design interventions to incentivize responsible data collection and use. She examines the societal and economic impact of data generated by the public, from rating data to social media comments. Her work sits at the intersection of data governance and human-computer interaction. Li holds a Ph.D. in Technology and Social Behavior from Northwestern University. She publishes in ICWSM, ACM CHI, ACM CSCW, and ACM FAccT. Her work has been covered by national and international media outlets, including NY Times, The Washington Post, and MIT Tech Review. 

Publications

• • Riya Sinha, Amelia Acker, and Hanlin Li. Data Work in Memory Institutions: Why and How Information Professionals Use Wikidata. In Proceedings of the 2025 Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW’2025 / PACM). preprint. 

  • Yiwei Wu, Leah Ajmani, Shayne Longpre, and Hanlin Li. A Systematic Review of NeurIPS Dataset Management Practices. NeurIPS 2024 Datasets and Benchmarks track. https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.00266 

  • Shayne Longpre et al. Consent in Crisis: The Rapid Decline of the AI Data Commons. NeurIPS 2024 Datasets and Benchmarks track. https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.14933 

  • Hanlin Li, Nicholas Vincent, Stevie Chancellor, and Brent Hecht. The Dimensions of Data Labor: A roadmap for Activists, Researchers, and Practitioners to Empower Data Producers. The 2023 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT'23) (PDF)

  • Danish Contractor, Julia Katherine Haines, Brent Hecht, Christopher Hines, Jenny Lee, Hanlin Li, Daniel McDuff, and Nicholas Vincent. Behavioral Use Licensing for Responsible AI. The 2022 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT’22) (PDF)

  • Hanlin Li, Brent Hecht, and Stevie Chancellor. Measuring the Value of Online Volunteer Work. Forthcoming at the International Conference on Web and Social Media 2022 (ICWSM’22) (PDF) Best Paper Honorable Mention

  • Hanlin Li, Brent Hecht, and Stevie Chancellor. All That’s Happening behind the Scenes: Putting the Spotlight on Volunteer Moderator Labor in Reddit. Forthcoming at the International Conference on Web and Social Media 2022 (ICWSM’22) (PDF)

  • Nicholas Vincent, Hanlin Li, Nicole Tilly, Stevie Chancellor, and Brent Hecht. 2021. Data Leverage: A Framework for Empowering the Public in its
    Relationship with Technology Companies. In Proceedings of (forthcoming) 2021
    Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT) (PDF)

• • Hanlin Li , and Brent Hecht. 2020. 3 Stars on Yelp, 4 Stars on Google Maps: A Cross-Platform Examination of Restaurant Ratings. In Proceedings of the 2020 Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW’2020 / PACM). (PDF | Video Presentation (5m))

• • Hanlin Li *, Nicholas Vincent *, Janice Tsai, Jofish Kaye, and Brent Hecht. 2019. How Do People Change Their Technology Use in Protest?: Understanding “Protest Users”. In Proceedings of the 2019 Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW’2019 / PACM). (Pre-Print PDF | Questionnaire | Slides)
    * indicates equal contributions.

• • Hanlin Li, Bodhi Alarcon, Sara Milkes Espinosa, and Brent Hecht. 2018. Out of Site: Empowering a New Approach to Online Boycotts. In Proceedings of the 2018 Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW’2018 / PACM), 2 (106). (Pre-Print PDF | Slides | Video Demo)

• • Hanlin Li, Disha Bora, Sagar Salvi, and Erin Brady. 2018. Slacktivists or Activists?: Identity Work in the Virtual Disability March. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’18). (Pre-Print PDF | Slides) 

• • Hanlin Li, Lynn Dombrowski, and Erin Brady. 2018. Working toward Empowering a Community: How Immigrant-Focused Nonprofit Organizations Use Twitter during Political Conflicts. In Proceedings of the 2018 International Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP ’18). (Pre-Print PDF)

• • Hanlin Li and Erin Brady. 2017. #accessibilityFail: Exploring the Potential of Using Social Media Posts to Identify Accessibility Problems. In Proceedings of the 2017 International iConference.

Science communication/Editorial 

• The Bulletin op-ed with Nick Vincent: On Biden's executive AI order 

• Tech Policy Press op-ed: Data Scraping Makes AI Systems Possible, but at Whose Expense?

• Invited blog post at the Montreal AI Ethics Institute: A roadmap toward empowering the labor force behind AI 

White paper

• Yakov Feygin, Hanlin Li, Chirag Lala, Brent Hecht, Nicholas Vincent, Luisa Scarcella, and Matthew Prewitt. A Data Dividend that Works: Steps Toward Building an Equitable Data Economy. The Berggruen Institute 2021.

Book chapter

• Yakov Feygin, Nicholas Vincent, Hanlin Li, Chirag Lala, and Luisa Scarcella. From My Data to Our Data: A Proposal to Equitably Distribute Wealth in a Digital Economy. The Future of Building Wealth. Published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis & The Aspen Institute

Posters

• Disha Bora, Hanlin Li, Sagar Salvi, Erin Brady. 2017. ActVirtual: Making Public Activism Accessible. In Proceedings of the 19th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers & accessibility.

• Hanlin Li and Erin Brady. 2016. #accessibilityFail: Categorizing Shared Photographs of Physical Accessibility Problems. In Proceedings of the 18th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers & accessibility. (PDF)

• Hanlin Li and Erin Brady. 2016. Using Technology to Plan Accessible Conferences. In Proceedings of The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.