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,...
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...
Newcomers, or new members to organizations or professions, bring insights that are critical to the advancement of society. Yet newcomers often have low self-efficacy, or low beliefs in their abilities to achieve a task, which can impact performance and retention. Research suggests that self-efficacy can be developed through in-person social...
This dissertation combines perspectives from social networks and teams research to advance understanding of team self-assembly. Across three substantive chapters, I explore team member search behaviors and invitation patterns in contexts where individuals exercise agency to select team members. First, I consider the search for team members in a social...
Responsiveness -- the time it takes for a message recipient to respond to a message -- has long been of interest to scholars in the fields of computer-mediated communication and human-computer interaction. It has been hypothesized that responsiveness is used to signal emotional information, and many empirical studies have demonstrated...
Over the past decade as smartphones and wearable tracking devices have grown in popularity, more individuals have begun collecting their own health and behavioral data. Innovations in sensor technology now allow individuals to continuously collect data over long periods of time with minimal effort. As a result, more data has...
When first-year students begin college they are thrown into a new environment where they are expected to simultaneously perform academically, form new relationships, and become independent. Many students struggle with this transition; experiences of stress, anxiety, and depression are common. For the majority of residential college students this is their...
Citizen media literacy is essential in a democratic society, particularly in the online environment where valid media sources have proliferated alongside purveyors of fake news. This dissertation explores technologies that automatically detect aspects of bias in news articles, with the ultimate aim of leveraging them to augment media literacy. It...
Millions of people freelance in the growing online gig economy, making it important to advance pay equity and support freelancers in earning their livelihoods online. Compared to offline employment, freelancing introduces at least two challenges that threaten freelancers’ ability to secure work and the equitability of the gig economy: 1)...
The production and spread of digital news involves a wide range of actors: journalists and the organizations that employ them, social media platforms, audiences, and myriad commentators, citizen journalists, bloggers, and other actors who contribute to the news ecosystem without inhabiting an official role. These actors interact in flexible, often...
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...
Human communication has become increasingly reliant on systems made and managed by large technology companies like Google, Apple, Twitter, and Meta (formerly Facebook). These systems offer people many benefits, but they also present new challenges for society. In recent years, researchers, lawmakers, and journalists have suggested that large technology companies...
Many volunteer communities rely on technological systems to help their members connect, collaborate and learn the norms of how to participate in the organization. This dissertation presents research that examines technological interventions designed to support participation in three different volunteer-run communities, all of which have porous boundaries, and allow volunteers...
Our experience of the physical world is mediated by our senses, but while most people have five senses, interactions with computer systems are largely limited to the visual sense. When working with nonvisual artifacts, like sound, on computers, such artifacts are typically transformed, or re-encoded, into something visual. Determining how...
Social media and online forums provide spaces where people can gather beyond restrictions of geographic proximity. For some individuals with mental illness, these spaces are vital; providing outlets and communities where a multitude of experiences are accepted and understood, rather than judged against normative, often ableist standards. For nearly three...