HIV status disclosure fields in online sex-social applications ("apps") are designed to help increase awareness, reduce stigma, and promote sexual health. Public disclosure could also help those diagnosed relate to others with similar statuses to feel less isolated. However, in our interview study (n=28) with HIV positive and negative men who have sex with men (MSM), we found some users preferred to keep their status private, especially when disclosure could stigmatise and disadvantage them, or risk revealing their status to someone they knew offline in a different context. How do users manage these tensions between health, stigma, and privacy? We analysed our interview data using signalling theory as a conceptual framework and identify participants developing 'signal appropriation' strategies, helping them manage the disclosure of their HIV status. Additionally, we propose a set of design considerations that explore the use of signals in the design of sensitive disclosure fields. CCS CONCEPTS• Human computer interaction (HCI) → Empirical studies in HCI; HCI theory, concepts and models.

Research is scarce on how direct and indirect support seeking strategies affect support exchange in online health communities. Moreover, prior research has relied mostly on content analysis of forum posts at the post level. In order to generate a more fine-grained analysis of support exchange, we conducted content analysis at the utterance level, taking directness of support seeking, quality of provision, forum type, and seeker gender into account. Our analysis of four popular online support forums for people living with human immunodeficiency virus found that type of support sought and provided, support seeking strategy, and quality of emotional support provision differed in care provider/formal forums versus social/informal forums. Interestingly, indirect support seeking tended to elicit more supportive emotional responses than direct support seeking strategies in all forums; we account for this in terms of type of support sought. Practical implications for online support communities are discussed.

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As spaces for learning about Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) research and practice (e.g., university classes, academic and industry labs, conferences) become more diverse, there is a pressing need to revise the universal collaborative and pedagogical structures supporting them.

As research methods evolve to provide a voice to understudied, distributed communities, we explore our experiences running and analyzing Asynchronous Remote Communities (ARC) studies. Our experiences stem from four separate Facebook-based ARC studies with people who experience: rare disease, pregnancy, miscarriage, or HIV. We delve into these studies' methods, and present updated guidelines focused on improved study design, data collection, and analysis plans for ARC studies.