Every day, we communicate through computers on projects ranging from a group lunch order to booking a flight to learning critical medical information. And every day, we also miscommunicate through computers: We don’t pick up on an intentionally humorous response, or we miss the criticality of a request. This is...
Many computing technologies are primarily useful because of the existence of some set of data created by people, intentionally in some cases and unintentionally in others. For instance, technologies like search engines, recommender systems, classifiers, and language models are all dependent on digital records of things people have said, done,...
Public-facing data-driven technologies such as social media platforms and search engines rely on data producers, such as users and crowd workers, to be feasible and financially sustainable. Recently, it became clear that the goals of these data-driven technologies do not always align with those of the public, causing public backlashes...
The provision of social services is becoming increasingly complex as human service agencies, nonprofits, and government agencies recognize the importance of wraparound care. A wraparound approach to social service provision acknowledges the importance of providing comprehensive services that meet various individual, family, and community needs. This approach is enacted through...
Digital behavior change interventions (e.g., mHealth, websites, behavior change apps) can be an effective way to engage groups who experience disadvantages in terms of social and economic attainment, with tailored health content and have potential to improve health outcomes and reduce health disparities. Given the importance and pervasiveness of behavior...
Asymmetric relationships between creators and consumers in peer-produced knowledge repositories produce inequitable knowledge representation--or knowledge gaps. These gaps result in unequal access to information, and downstream technologies that leverage peer-produced data perpetuate these inequities. Effective knowledge gap identification represents a necessary first step towards equitable knowledge representation. However, while prior...
This dissertation explores how a nonprofit network orchestrator went through revolutionary change in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout data collection, the nonprofit sector grappled with uncertainties about the funding landscape (Batsell, 2020), how to deliver programming when in-person interactions were impossible (Warren, 2020), substantial job losses (Newhouse 2021a; Newhouse...
Having an Experience: Media Franchises, Events, & Participatory Culture explores, like its title suggests, what we mean when we talk about “having an experience” in today’s media culture. Traveling to an expanded network of sites where media fans are actively called to go out and “have an experience” in the...
Yugoslav wartime television news often conformed to the demands of the political regimes. Informed by this knowledge, scholars have argued that TV as a medium incited and legitimized the wars by fostering ethnonationalist ideologies. Using archival and textual analysis, this project examines how television reacted to the political constraints imposed...
Over the past decade, concepts and expressions derived from Black feminist theory, a line of intellectual thought historically produced from Black women’s unique lived experiences that asks us to consider how one’s material realities are co-constituted by multiple, interlocking systems of the oppressed, have traveled into the public sphere through...