Introduction to Social Media: Culture, Identity, and Inclusion Minitrack

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Exploring Gender, Race, and Sexuality with Social Media Data

We present a full day, hands-on workshop that will provide an opportunity for researchers in our community to explore social media data and ask questions about the intersectionalities of gender, race, and sexuality. We will discuss scholarly questions and methods related to application of social media data analysis and the implications of using, presenting, and communicating results in research contexts. Workshop participants will learn how to access and analyze data using various tools and methods, drawing specifically on a Twitter dataset collected May-June 2014 during the trending hashtag #YesAllWomen. Selected participants will also present their own work to foster opportunities for targeted discussion and continued collaboration. The goals of this workshop are not only to build community but also to enable researchers to begin collecting and analyzing social media data to further their own work. The workshop emphasizes the importance of analyzing social media data ethically, respecting and engaging the sometimes vulnerable and marginalized populations who may have generated the data.ye

Speculum: Characterizing the creation, curation, reproduction, and neglect of women’s health information on the English language Wikipedia

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2019“The encyclopaedia was traditionally a mirror of the world (a speculum)—of how it was, of how it should be.” Andrew Brown, 2011 Wikipedia is one of the most powerful and ubiquitous information sources in our world today. Content from the English language Wikipedia—the oldest and largest of more than 300 language Wikipedias—populates a range of information systems, topping Google search results and shaping the responses of intelligent assistants like Siri and Alexa. In recent years, the online encyclopedia has also become a prominent source of health information for both patients and practitioners. Wikipedia, however, is not without its problems. Although Wikipedia purports to be the encyclopedia “anyone can edit,” as Ford & Wajcman observe, “not everyone does” (2017). By best counts, more than 80% of Wikipedians are men (Hill & Shaw, 2013). This demographic skew in participation has come to be known as the gender gap. The gender gap in participation has led researchers and Wikipedians alike to ask if who edits Wikipedia results in related gaps in content. Given what we know about Wikipedia’s gender gap, what does the encyclopedia have to say about women’s health? Who is creating, curating, and controlling women’s health information on the English language Wikipedia? Does it matter? What else might matter? In my dissertation, I adapt object biography—a material culture practice used in anthropology—to reconstruct the life-history of a selection of women’s health articles on the English language Wikipedia (n=5). Drawing from article revision histories, talk page discussions, trace data, interviews with editors (n=15), and five years of ethnographic research, I write the biography of each one of these articles, noting how they have grown, been neglected, become boundary objects for different communities (e.g., editors, readers, medical practitioners, laypeople), sparked debates about how scientific knowledge is reproduced, and complicated assumptions about the relationships between participatory gaps and content gaps. The contributions of this work are threefold: (1) by being the first study to explicitly interrogate women’s health information on the English language Wikipedia, this work makes a clear empirical contribution; (2) by adapting object biography to tell the life-history of digital objects, this work makes a methodological contribution to information science; (3) finally, by interrogating assumptions about the relationships between participatory gaps and content gaps in user-generated content systems like Wikipedia and by providing empirical evidence that these relationships are more nuanced and complicated than prior work suggests, this dissertation makes a contribution to future social computing research by providing a unique lens through which we might study these relationships. This work also has broader implications for the field of information science, particularly health informatics, given the rise of Wikipedia’s reach and influence and the pervasive medicalization of women’s health it perpetuates

Qualtrics Survey Data - Women and Wikipedia

<p>This survey was executed in October 2014. All Wikipedians were welcome to participate, but the Gender gap mailing list was a primary venue of notification/recruitment. The survey was intended to supplement an ongoing interview based study about the "gender gap" on the English language Wikipedia. </p

“No Prejudice Here”: Examining Social Identity Work in Starter Pack Memes

As a performance venue, online social spaces afford users a variety of ways to express themselves. Many of these expressions include social identity work, such as the articulation, affirmation, or policing of a shared identity. In this study, we examine one online space in which users engage in social identity work: a Reddit forum (r/starterpacks) that primarily generates and discusses image memes of a very specific format: the “starter pack.” Users leverage these image memes to convey what we refer to in this article as prototypes of social identities. Many of these prototypical depictions are necessarily influenced by offline social groups and/or consumer culture, and are furthermore constructed around gendered, racial, or ethnic stereotypes. To understand how these image memes are used to form and perpetuate prototypes of social identities, we employed content analysis to evaluate a sample of 500 image meme artifacts created, shared, and upvoted by the subreddit’s users. We discuss the process of applying visual analysis techniques to articulate themes identified in the image meme expressions, in particular: (1) the default of the White, male identity in starter pack characterizations; (2) the production of oppressive social identities through the use of visual and textual content; and (3) the dedication to a stance of “consumption” in assembling starter pack memes, both through body politics expressed therein and use of consumer goods in images. Finally, we draw on reader response theory to frame the challenges of researchers “reading” starter pack memes, despite employing systematic methods of analysis

Cairn: Using digital markers to bridge learning communities

Cairn is a proposed geo-social networking mobile application that could help people search for, find, participate in, and tag learning communities, events, and artifacts. The goal of Cairn would be to enable users to find others with whom they can study, attend learning events, and share learning related artifacts, such as museum exhibits or historical markers. The primary target audience would consist of post-secondary students; the secondary target audience would be recent graduates and young professionals. Cairn is proposed to be a native mobile app integrated with existing web-based interest and/or social networks. This paper presents a design exploration, including an overview of the relevant sections of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) geo-social and learning markets, eight key features identified by focus groups and interviewees, a case informed by user research, and possible directions for prototype development and integration with So.cl.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Perceptions of Walls: An Exploration of Trait Affect and Personality in a Cross Cultural Study of Perception of Risks Related to the Edward Snowden Case

In this within subjects study, we explored the role of trait affect, personality, and culture on an individual's information seeking behavior about the Edward Snowden case. We also considered how these factors may affect an individual's perception of risks related to Snowden's actions. We used Amazon's Mechanical Turk to conduct two surveys five weeks apart with respondents in both India and the U.S. After accounting for differences in age, education, and gender, early findings suggest that trait affect and personality are associated with how people acquire and understand information as well as the information sources they choose to use. We also found that culture played a significant role in shaping how our respondents perceived the Snowden case and the implications of risk associated with his actions. Since our study is explorative and our respondent sample was limited by our survey method, these findings warrant further analyses.publishedye

Multiples Over Models: Interrogating the Past and Collectively Reimagining the Future of Menstrual Sensemaking

In this article, we describe our efforts to retrace and reimagine period tracking technology—or, mobile applications designed to support the documentation and quantification of menstrual cycle data. In their current form, these systems often encourage those who menstruate to extract intimate information about the body (e.g., consistency or color of menstrual flow, physical and emotional symptoms), while promising to predict fertility and offer insight into managing one\u27s period. In doing so, these technologies subtly dictate the forms of knowledge and types of relationships menstruators are expected to establish with their bodies (i.e., transactional or instrumentalized). Through historical analysis and a series of participatory experiments, we offer a vision for menstrual sensemaking that expands on these forms of interaction and ways of knowing to emphasize multiplicity and dimensionality rather than models, predictability, or a user\u27s relation to averages or norms