I haven't posted in #introductions in a while and I think my profile can use an update!
My research is on networked information systems and the social dimensions of interoperability. I'm interested generally in alternative technology platforms (such as the Fediverse) and emergent behaviors in online communities.
More formally, I'm currently a PhD student at Northwestern and I am a part of @communitydata
I live in Chicago and like to make electronic circuits sing in my spare time.
I'm going to be at #ICA22 this week. This will be my first in-person conference as a grad student. Exciting!
We made a discord for CS/HCI PhD students to meet folks / socialize, and are having a social hour tonight (the 18th) at 7pm EST-whenever.
A bit last minute on hci.social but send folks our way if they are interested!
Our ICWSM paper (with @axz and Tim Althoff) looks at what it actually means to make online communities "better."
Thru surveys of 6k+ redditors ✒️ , we find that while quality and variety of content are generally considered most important, and size and democracy are least important, there is immense variety in values 🌈!
▶️ no one size fits all solution! 🗜️
Moderators think democracy is less important than non-mods, and there is extra disagreement over safety.
Relatedly, can anyone point me to the paper/research I'm thinking of on the chicken egg problem of building new online communities: no one wants to join unless there are already people there?
This is a fascinating graph of American attitudes towards science from 1973-2021.
The whole thing is interesting, but look at how the divergence by party starts around 2007, then just takes off.
My department is a hosting a panel on "Tech, Media & Democracy" (starting in 5 minutes) with Chris Bail (Duke), Mor Naaman (Cornell Tech) and Rebekah Tromble (George Washington), moderated by Ágnes Horvát. It's a public event and you can register here: https://northwestern.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_s3yf8Y90RGy0AIeKewHzeg
It was fun speaking and remotely listening in to the conversations at this CS+Law conference today: http://dimacs.rutgers.edu/events/details?eID=1924 There was even a mention of hci.social from @asb!
A "hybrid" course at #CHI2022 in which the instructor and all registered (paying) attendees were remote. Someone was guarding the door to make sure nobody snuck in to watch the Zoom session being projected to the completely empty room.
The latest Mastodon update changes the name (but not functionality) of "Direct" posts to "Mentioned people only" and rewords the warning to make the privacy implications clearer. https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/releases/tag/v3.5.2
"Toxicity in the Decentralized Web and the Potential for Model Sharing" https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.12709
Study exploring toxicity on #Pleroma and testing the feasibility of building distributed, automated moderation tools across instances.
Come meet us at CHI 2022 https://blog.communitydata.science/come-meet-us-at-chi-2022/
Academic and research Mastodon servers https://fediscience.org/server-list.html #OpenScience
Hey #askfediverse people who use #emacs for academic writing: What are your favourite packages, snippets, transients, hydras and the like? Anything that makes your work with #LaTeX, #BibTeX, #R, #KnitR, and the like easier or more effective? I'd love to hear them.
Boosts appreciated.
And maybe @bgcarlisle knows someone who knows someone...?
I haven't posted in #introductions in a while and I think my profile can use an update!
My research is on networked information systems and the social dimensions of interoperability. I'm interested generally in alternative technology platforms (such as the Fediverse) and emergent behaviors in online communities.
More formally, I'm currently a PhD student at Northwestern and I am a part of @communitydata
I live in Chicago and like to make electronic circuits sing in my spare time.
I research online communities and create computational social science tools.
🌐🏳️🌈🤓