When Code Governs Community

We present a qualitative study of governance in the community of League of Legends, a popular Multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game developed by Riot Games. To cope with toxic behaviors such as griefing and flaming, Riot Games initially implemented a crowdsourcing system inviting players to participate in governing their own community. However, in May, 2014, they automated the system, relying heavily on code while minimizing the level of human participation. We analyzed both players’ and Riot Games’ narratives to understand their attitudes towards the relationship between human judgment and automation, as well as between alienation and community. We found stark differences between players and Riot Games in terms of attitudes towards code and value in designing online governance. We discuss how the design of governance might impact online community

Resisting the Censorship Infrastructure in China

China’s censorship infrastructure is widely recognized as sophisticated, strict, and comprehensive. We conducted a qualitative study to understand Chinese citizens’ practices to navigate the censored Chinese Internet. We found that participants’ practices were closely related to their understanding of and resistance to the censorship infrastructure. Participants switched between public and private channels based on the information they desired to seek. They communicated in ways that were considered less vulnerable to censorship examination. They broadened their information search to mitigate the impact of censored content consumption. Through these practices, participants reportedly coped with the censorship infrastructure in an effective manner. We discuss how this case of resistance to censorship in China may further our understanding of such infrastructure

Knowledge Production and Social Roles in an Online Community of Emerging Occupation: A Study of User Experience Practitioners on Reddit

New occupations are emerging that have high job demand in the market, but lack a coherent body of disciplinary knowledge. For example, user experience (UX) design is an emerging occupation that has not been adequately supported by the traditional educational system. For learners beginning their undergraduate education, there is no concrete path to follow to become a UX professional, due to few UX-focused undergraduate academic programs. Online communities of practices have been recognized as important learning venues, even while institutions of formal education often lag behind in structuring knowledge production and distribution. However, little is known about how knowledge is generated and diffused in online communities in the context of emerging occupations with volatile knowledge boundaries. In this paper, we analyze knowledge production in relation to social roles in an online UX community. We show that knowledge production is highly distributed, involving the participation of community members of varied levels of experience. We discuss how online communities support the development of the UX occupation

The Medical Authority of AI: A Study of AI-enabled Consumer-facing Health Technology

Recently, consumer-facing health technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based symptom checkers (AISCs) have sprung up in everyday healthcare practice. AISCs solicit symptom information from users and provide medical suggestions and possible diagnoses, a responsibility that people usually entrust with real-person authorities such as physicians and expert patients. Thus, the advent of AISCs begs a question of whether and how they transform the notion of medical authority in everyday healthcare practice. To answer this question, we conducted an interview study with thirty AISC users. We found that users assess the medical authority of AISCs using various factors including automated decisions and interaction design patterns of AISC apps, associations with established medical authorities like hospitals, and comparisons with other health technologies. We reveal how AISCs are used in healthcare delivery, discuss how AI transforms conventional understandings of medical authority, and derive implications for designing AI-enabled health technology

With Help from Afar: Cross-Local Communication in an Online COVID-19 Pandemic Community

Crisis informatics research has examined geographically bounded crises, such as natural or man-made disasters, identifying the critical role of local and hyper-local information focused on one geographic area in crisis communication. The COVID-19 pandemic represents an understudied kind of crisis that simultaneously hits locales across the globe, engendering an emergent form of crisis communication, which we term cross-local communication. Cross-local communication is the exchange of crisis information between geographically dispersed locales to facilitate local crisis response. To unpack this notion, we present a qualitative study of an online migrant community of overseas Taiwanese who supported fellow Taiwanese from afar. We detail four distinctive types of cross-local communication: situational updates, risk communication, medical consultation, and coordination. We discuss how the current pandemic situation brings new understandings to crisis informatics and online health community literature, and what role digital technologies could play in supporting cross-local communication

Exploring and Promoting Diagnostic Transparency and Explainability in Online Symptom Checkers

Online symptom checkers (OSC) are widely used intelligent systems in health contexts such as primary care, remote healthcare, and epidemic control. OSCs use algorithms such as machine learning to facilitate self-diagnosis and triage based on symptoms input by healthcare consumers. However, intelligent systems’ lack of transparency and comprehensibility could lead to unintended consequences such as misleading users, especially in high-stakes areas such as healthcare. In this paper, we attempt to enhance diagnostic transparency by augmenting OSCs with explanations. We first conducted an interview study (N=25) to specify user needs for explanations from users of existing OSCs. Then, we designed a COVID-19 OSC that was enhanced with three types of explanations. Our lab-controlled user study (N=20) found that explanations can significantly improve user experience in multiple aspects. We discuss how explanations are interwoven into conversation flow and present implications for future OSC designs

Rethinking Civic Computing in China

Civic computing research has accumulated a systematic body of knowledge about Western societies. However, little attention has been paid to China, a non-Western, non-democratic society. I study how information and communication technologies (ICTs) affect civic participation in China. I have conducted a qualitative study of how Weibo users understood and discussed the Umbrella Movement, Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protest from September to December 2014. Weibo is one of the most common micro-blogging services in China.Drawing on Foucault’s work on care of the self, I analyze how my participants cultivated their own knowledge through civic participation. Participants faced challenges in comprehending numerous competing narratives and discourses from information sources, such as the Hong Kong media, the mainland media, Western media, and social media. They were determined to study a variety of sources on their own. They focused on improving their own understanding and analytic skill. ICTs mediated their practices of care of the self.I argue that the choice of care of the self was conditioned in China’s unique context. Particularly, the notion of care of the self resonates with the teachings of Confucianism, China’s traditional philosophical and ethical system. I argue that the notion of care of the self is of special value to civic computing research

Rethinking civic computing in China

Civic computing research is concerned with the relationship of digital technologies to civic participation. We discuss Foucault’s work on the care of the self which considers how a person seeks a certain mode of being such as happiness, perfection, or wisdom. We describe our qualitative study of Chinese mainland citizens who used technologies to understand and participate in political events, in particular the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement. We examine how care of the self offers an alternative, critical perspective for rethinking civic participation and civic computing