bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Finite-fault Slip Distribution and Initial Water Elevation of the 2024 Noto Peninsula, Japan Earthquake Estimated from Tsunami Waveforms
Authors: Song Linjian , An Chao
Published: November 2024

On January 1, 2024, a moment magnitude (Mw) 7.5 earthquake struck the Noto Peninsula area in Japan, triggering a tsunami and causing significant casualties and massive economic and property damage. Many wave gauges around the Sea of Japan recorded the tsunami. In this study we inverted the observed tsunami waveforms for the distributed slip on the JSPJ (Japan Sea Earthquake and Tsunami Research Project) fault model, and the initial water elevation, respectively. The results show that the earthquake’s slip distribution concentrates mainly on the NT4 subfault located to the northeast of the peninsula, with the maximum slip reaching about 5[Formula: see text]m. This slip model results in a maximum initial tsunami wave height that reaches ∼3[Formula: see text]m. The inversion of initial water elevation indicates a main tsunami source roughly located in [Formula: see text]E[Formula: see text]E and [Formula: see text]N[Formula: see text]N, with the maximum initial elevation of 2.7[Formula: see text]m, which is consistent with the finite-fault inversion. We also simulated the tsunami waveforms at observation stations using the inverted JSPJ fault model and the initial water elevation to evaluate the effects of wave dispersion. The results indicate that the effects of dispersion were minor at most stations, and only observable at far-field stations along the eastern Russian coast and the western coast of Hokkaido.
Application investigations of force fields for molecular dynamic simulations of medical aluminum particles
Authors: Liu Yi , Lei Yuxin , Guo Tao , Li Aojie , Tian Feng , Liu Rengang , Shu Kehui
Published: November 2024

The phase transition of metals is a research hotspot in molecular dynamic (MD) simulation. With the increase of the development of MD, different force fields with different requirements have emerged, which helps to select the appropriate force field and also increases the difficulty of selection. In addition, previous studies have been affected by particle size, which affects the melting point accuracy. MD simulation of the melting and condensing behavior of Aluminum (Al) particles was carried out by using EAM force fields from different sources. The thermal behavior of phase transition was studied by means of potential energy, specific heat, MSD, FCC lattice number, etc. The melting and condensation process of 2–10[Formula: see text]nm cubic without boundary under the NPT system was simulated, and the steady-state simulation was discussed by means of an isometric temperature point. It is proved that the borderless simulation can completely eliminate the boundary effect. The parameter setting of efficient use of EAM is widely discussed by using this method, and the effectiveness of the EAM force field is compared, so as to improve the efficiency of scholars engaged in related research and avoid the difficult choice of force field files. The results show that the borderless simulation has quite high advantages in terms of phase transition potential energy and melting point, while the current EAM force field is inherently deficient in this kind of discussion, and the development of new force field is urgent.
NH3 gas sensing over 2D phosphorene sheet: A first-principles study
Authors: Kumar Naresh , Mishra Soni , Gautam Yogendra K. , Kumar Anuj , Mishra Abhishek Kumar
Published: November 2024

First-principles based calculations were executed to investigate the sensing properties of ammonia gas molecules on a two-dimensional pristine black phosphorene sheet toward its application as a gas sensor and related applications. We discuss in detail the interaction of ammonia gas molecules on the phosphorene single sheet through the structural change analysis, electronic band gap, Bader charge transfer, and density-of-states calculations. Our calculations indicate that phosphorene could be used as a detector of ammonia, where good sensitivity and very short recovery time at room temperature confirm the potential use of phosphorene in detecting ammonia.
Navigating U.S.-China Trade War: Mexico’s Economic Diplomacy in Perspective
Authors: Morales-Fajardo María Esther , Franzoni Marcela
Published: November 2024

China’s growing involvement in trade and foreign investments across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has impacted regional countries’ relations with the United States, the traditionally dominant power. In the case of Mexico, China is expanding its presence in the Mexican economy, which could either strengthen or complicate the Mexico-U.S. relationship. The paper aims to examine the impact of China’s role in the Mexican economy within the framework of Mexico-U.S. Ties and the U.S.-China trade war. It argues that the trade war augments Mexico’s participation in the U.S. market through the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). The empirical analysis demonstrates that Mexico has leveraged the U.S.-China trade war under the new rules established by the USMCA. The new rules of origin and labor provisions give Mexico a greater advantage in accessing the U.S. market and enhance the country’s appeal to foreign companies for nearshoring, despite the asymmetrical nature of Mexico-U.S. relations. Meanwhile, rather than hindering Mexico-China trade, the prohibition stipulated in the USMCA against signing a trade agreement with a non-market economy has helped expand trade links between the two countries.
Chinese Entrepreneurship and Russian–Chinese Border Development in the Context of Global Regionalism
Authors: Zalesskaia Olga
Published: November 2024

The role of Chinese entrepreneurship in the development of Russian–Chinese border relations in the context of global regionalism is a topic of increasing importance in international studies. Chinese entrepreneurship is considered in the context of interregional Russian–Chinese cooperation. This paper studies the features of Chinese ethnic entrepreneurship in the Russian Far East and examines the impact of Chinese businesses on the economic, social, and political dynamics of the Russian–Chinese border region and their influence on global regionalism. Through case studies and analysis of current trends, this paper explores how Chinese entrepreneurship has transformed the border region, creating new opportunities for economic cooperation, cultural exchange, and political engagement between Russia and China. The author also discusses the challenges and potential conflicts that arise from the growing presence of Chinese businesses in the region, and offers recommendations for fostering positive and sustainable development in the area.
A Novel Xanthene-Containing Compound: Crystal Structure, Computational Study and Investigation of Non-Optical Properties
Authors: Kurbanova Malahat , Ayan Ashrafi , Ashfaq Muhammad , Maharramov Abel , Ahsin Atazaz , Dege Necmi , Abuelizz Hatem A. , Al-Salahi Rashad , Tahir Muhammad Nawaz , Mali Suraj N. , El Bakri Youness
Published: November 2024

The reaction of [Formula: see text]-methylbenzaldehyde and 5,5-dimethyl-1,3-cyclohexanedione with the addition of HCl yielded 3,3,6,6-tetramethyl-9-([Formula: see text]-tolyl)-3,4,5,6,7,9-hexahydro-1[Formula: see text]-xanthene-1,8(2[Formula: see text]-dione (TTHD). X-ray diffraction method was used for verification of the crystal structure. Supramolecular assembly was studied via various intermolecular interactions and explored via Hirshfeld surface analysis. The contact-making ability of the pairs of atoms is determined by enrichment ratios. The stability of the present compound is determined through interaction energies. Electronic structure calculations are conducted at the wb97xd/def2tzvp theoretical level. Charge transfer and reactivity are estimated through natural bonding orbital (NBO) charge analysis. Global reactivity parameters are calculated and compared with the reported molecule. Quantum theory of atoms in molecules (QTAIM) is exploited to unveil the bonding’s nature and van der Waals interactions (vdW). Electron localizing function (ELF), and localized orbital locator (LOL) are also employed to investigate electronic properties. The optical and nonlinear optical (NLO) properties of the present compound are examined using the density functional theory (DFT) method.
Design, Synthesis, Computational Studies and Evaluation of Novel Hybrid Bipyrimidine Analogues for Anticancer Activity against MCF-7 and A549 Cell Lines
Authors: Patel Pinkal , Yadav Mange Ram , Sheth Chintan , Shah Umang , Mali Suraj
Published: November 2024

A series of novel hybrid bipyrimidine derivatives were designed, synthesized and evaluated for their anticancer activity against the breast cancer cell line MCF-7 and the lung cancer cell line A549. The structures of all the synthesized molecules were confirmed using various spectroscopic techniques. Molecular docking studies were conducted using Maestro software from Schrödinger, targeting the crystal structure of the ErbB4 kinase (PDB ID: 3BBT). Lapatinib and gefitinib were used as reference drugs to compare binding affinities with the ErbB family of receptor tyrosine kinases. Several of the synthesized bipyrimidine derivatives demonstrated promising activity, with IC[Formula: see text] values comparable to the standard drug doxorubicin and gefitinib. Notably, compound PP-10 exhibited equipotent effects when compared to the reference drugs in both breast and lung cancer cell lines. Additionally, compounds PP-07 and PP-09 showed significant potency against the MCF-7 cell line, while compounds PP-02, PP-09, PP-11 and PP-14 were active against the A549 cell line. These novel hybrid bipyrimidine derivatives served as potential lead molecules in the development of novel drug-like molecules for the treatment of breast and lung cancer.
Cenozoic surface Earth system evolution and dynamic paleogeomorphic reconstruction from the Tibet Plateau to the Western Pacific linked by the Yangtze River
Authors: Tian Zihan , Suo Yanhui , Ding Xuesong , Han Xu , Song Shuangshuang , Fu Xinjian , Li Sanzhong
Published: November 2024

The formation of the modern east-flowing Yangtze River is marked by the incision of the Three Gorges (TG) between the Sichuan and Jianghan basins. However, it is still controversial on the timing of the TG incision, due to diverse tectonic, sedimentological and geochemical records. These records, together with other geological data, i.e. curves of paleo-climate and sea level fluctuation, are critical parameters in the software
Badlands
, a tool to simulate large-scale and long-term geomorphic evolution. Using
Badlands
, we modeled the geomorphology and drainage evolutionary process of the Yangtze River since the Late Cretaceous (80 Ma). It revealed that the drainage system in the Sichuan Basin was gradually reversed from southward flowing to northward flowing during the Late Eocene and the Oligocene, due to the periodic uplift of the eastern Tibet Plateau and the southwestern Yangtze Block. Coevally, the Jianghan Basin experienced a base level drop, controlled by the collapse of a paleo-coastal mountain range and the subsequent continental rifting along the Southeast China continental margin. The tectono-geomorphic interplay eventually led to the incision of the TG at the Late Oligocene (about 24Ma), when the drainage system of the Upper Yangtze River was captured by the Middle-Lower Yangtze River.
PACMHCI V8, CSCW2, November 2024 Editorial
Authors: Cardoso Llach Daniel , Mustafa Maryam , Niu Shuo , Quercia Daniele , Wong-Villacres Marisol
Published: November 2024

We are delighted to present this issue of the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction to the Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW) community. The issue contains 171 papers, of which 117 were accepted from the July 2023 cycle, and 55 were accepted from the January 2024 cycle, and one was withdrawn. Exploring a broad range of inspiring and timely topics, the issue collects the sustained efforts of a community of authors, external reviewers, Associate Chairs, and Editors. The result is an outstanding selection of high-quality contributions which are certain to shape the future of the field. Our deepest gratitude as Papers Chairs goes to this community for its determination to extend the CSCW traditions of collegiality and rigor in crafting extraordinary scholarship.
The Mundane Art of Cybersecurity: Living with Insecure IT in Danish Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises
Authors: Kocksch Laura , Jensen Torben Elgaard
Published: November 2024

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are an essential part of the global economy and paramount to local communities and employment markets. They are also considered to be particularly vulnerable to cyberattacks as they lack technical competencies, strict controls, and organizational routines. We present the results of an ethnographic study of 30 SMEs in Denmark to further our understanding of how companies in this segment handle cybersecurity in their daily practices. We suggest that cybersecurity is dealt with as a mundane art: instead of striving for solutions, SMEs must leave things undone, endure partially broken systems, and resort to making things slightly better or worse but never good. In line with CSCW scholarship on care in broken worlds, we emphasize the various tactics of living with insecure technologies. In a broken world, securing is often not about assurance or following rules but about handling dilemmas, breaking things a little but not a lot, or waiting things out.
Entangled Amid Misaligned Seams: Limitations to Technology-Mediated Care for Repairing Infrastructural Breakdowns in a Youth Empowerment Program
Authors: Choi Adrian , Pfohl Grace , D'Ignazio Catherine , Foucault Welles Brooke , Parker Andrea G.
Published: November 2024

The COVID-19 pandemic broke down the human infrastructure of many community-based programs, disrupting in-person care services for low-resourced families. Yet, minimal work has explored how actors repair these breakdowns and how other infrastructures may interfere with repairs in such contexts. Interviewing adolescents and adults affiliated with a youth empowerment program, we used the pandemic to examine how a human infrastructure that previously facilitated a sense of community broke down and how members attempted to repair this infrastructure. While organized activities, resources, and interpersonal interactions aligned to facilitate in-person care that established a sense of community, incorporating information and communication technologies to align a sociotechnical infrastructure during social restrictions could not overcome multiple constraints imposed by other infrastructures that limited this sense of community. We discuss limitations to care and aligning together multiple disjointed infrastructures, calling for CSCW researchers to critically consider asset-based design as a methodology that might help sustain a community's well-being.
The Denizen Designer Project: Practices, Relationships, and Principles of Activist-Led Design
Authors: Harrington Christina N. , Favela Paola , Sum Cella M. , Fox Sarah , Dombrowski Lynn
Published: November 2024

Design activism is a way for designers and researchers to negotiate societal inequities and resulting implications for design practices. Within HCI and design, community-based methods are a common way to situate design engagements among those directly impacted by social inequities. Despite its potential for social impact, current approaches to design activism can be extractive and at odds with community-aligned advocacy. Drawing on interviews with 32 individuals who use design to address local, social inequities, we extend the current discourse around design activism by exploring 'activist-led design'. We outline four key considerations of this work: understanding activist-led design practices; relationality and community engagements; challenges of doing this work; and democratizing access to design. Our analysis highlights implications for academia's role in design activism. This paper interrogates design activism's role as a social and communal practice, and considers ways to support activist-led design. We propose considerations that contribute to the larger conversation of academic design having more equitable impact.
A Culturally-Aware AI Tool for Crowdworkers: Leveraging Chronemics to Support Diverse Work Styles
Authors: Toxtli Carlos , Curtis Christopher , Savage Saiph
Published: November 2024

Crowdsourcing markets are expanding worldwide, but often feature standardized interfaces that ignore the cultural diversity of their workers, negatively impacting their well-being and productivity. To transform these workplace dynamics, this paper proposes creating culturally-aware workplace tools, specifically designed to adapt to the cultural dimensions of monochronic and polychronic work styles. We illustrate this approach with "CultureFit," a tool that we engineered based on extensive research in Chronemics and culture theories. To study and evaluate our tool in the real world, we conducted a field experiment with 55 workers from 24 different countries. Our field experiment revealed that CultureFit significantly improved the earnings of workers from cultural backgrounds often overlooked in design. Our study is among the pioneering efforts to examine culturally aware digital labor interventions. It also provides access to a dataset with over two million data points on culture and digital work, which can be leveraged for future research in this emerging field. The paper concludes by discussing the importance and future possibilities of incorporating cultural insights into the design of tools for digital labor.
Grounding with Structure: Exploring Design Variations of Grounded Human-AI Collaboration in a Natural Language Interface
Authors: Do Hyo Jin , Brachman Michelle , Dugan Casey , Johnson James M. , Lauer Julia , Rai Priyanshu , Pan Qian
Published: November 2024

Selecting an effective utterance among countless possibilities that match a user's intention poses a challenge when using natural language interfaces. To address the challenge, we leveraged the principle of least collaborative effort in communication grounding theory and designed three grounded conversational interactions: 1) a grounding interface allows users to start with a provisional input and then invite a conversational agent to complete their input, 2) a multiple grounding interface presents multiple inputs for the user to select from, and 3) a structured grounding interface guides users to write inputs in a structure best understood by the system. We compared our three grounding interfaces to an ungrounded control interface in a crowdsourced study (N=80) using a natural language system that generates small programs. We found that the grounding interfaces reduced cognitive load and improved task performance. The structured grounding interface further reduced speaker change costs and improved technology acceptance, without sacrificing the perception of control. We discuss the implications of designing grounded conversational interactions in natural language systems.
The Algorithm and the Org Chart: How Algorithms Can Conflict with Organizational Structures
Authors: Valentine Melissa A. , Pratt Amanda L. , Hinds Rebecca , Bernstein Michael S.
Published: November 2024

Algorithms are introducing changes to individuals? jobs, but do algorithms also lead to changes in the structures of organizations themselves? Organizational structures, as often formalized into organization (org) charts, are meant to facilitate coordinated decision-making. Yet our 10-month ethnographic study of a large online retail company reveals why the organizational structures that facilitate effective decision-making by humans may be in tension with the organizational structures that facilitate effective decision-making using algorithms. Our findings show that the human decision-makers needed small, divided-up sets of decisions, and they had previously accomplished this through how they structured individuals' roles and teams in the org chart. In contrast, when data scientists developed a new algorithm and first deployed it within organizational structures meant to support human decision-making, they realized that these small divided-up decision spaces were arbitrarily constraining the algorithm's search space. When not constrained in this manner, the algorithm could identify and recommend better solutions, but those optimal solutions did not always align with the structure of roles and teams in the org chart. This study suggests that as algorithms are integrated into the workplace, organization designs may begin to more explicitly reflect the contours of those algorithms' behaviors.
"Sharing, Not Showing Off": How BeReal Approaches Authentic Self-Presentation on Social Media Through Its Design
Authors: Kim JaeWon , Wolfe Robert , Chordia Ishita , Davis Katie , Hiniker Alexis
Published: November 2024

Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to the pressures created by social media, such as heightened self-consciousness and the need for extensive self-presentation. In this study, we investigate how
BeReal,
a social media platform designed to counter some of these pressures, influences adolescents' self-presentation behaviors. We interviewed 29 users aged 13-18 to understand their experiences with BeReal. We found that BeReal's design focuses on spontaneous sharing, including randomly timed daily notifications and reciprocal posting, discourages staged posts, encourages careful curation of the audience, and reduces pressure on self-presentation. The space created by BeReal offers benefits such as validating an unfiltered life and reframing social comparison, but its approach to self-presentation is sometimes perceived as limited or unappealing and, at times, even toxic. Drawing on this empirical data, we propose design guidelines for platforms that support authentic self-presentation while fostering reciprocity and expanding beyond spontaneous photo-sharing. These guidelines aim to enable users to portray themselves more comprehensively and accurately, ultimately supporting teens' developmental needs, particularly in building authentic relationships.
Characterizing the Structure of Online Conversations Across Reddit
Authors: Yu Yulin , Jiang Julie , Dhillon Paramveer S.
Published: November 2024

The proliferation of social media platforms has afforded social scientists unprecedented access to vast troves of data on human interactions, facilitating the study of online behavior at an unparalleled scale. These platforms typically structure conversations as threads, forming tree-like structures known as ''discussion trees.'' This paper examines the structural properties of online discussions on Reddit by analyzing both global (community-level) and local (post-level) attributes of these discussion trees. We conduct a comprehensive statistical analysis of a year's worth of Reddit data, encompassing a quarter of a million posts and several million comments. Our primary objective is to disentangle the relative impacts of global and local properties and evaluate how specific features shape discussion tree structures. The results reveal that both local and global features contribute significantly to explaining structural variation in discussion trees. However, local features, such as post content and sentiment, collectively have a greater impact, accounting for a larger proportion of variation in the width, depth, and size of discussion trees. Our analysis also uncovers considerable heterogeneity in the impact of various features on discussion structures. Notably, certain global features play crucial roles in determining specific discussion tree properties. These features include the subreddit's topic, age, popularity, and content redundancy. For instance, posts in subreddits focused on politics, sports, and current events tend to generate deeper and wider discussion trees. This research enhances our understanding of online conversation dynamics and offers valuable insights for both content creators and platform designers. By elucidating the factors that shape online discussions, our work contributes to ongoing efforts to improve the quality and effectiveness of digital discourse.
Determining the Effect of Feedback Quality on User Engagement on Online Idea Crowdsourcing Platforms Using an AI model
Authors: Imam Sana Hassan , Metz Christopher A. , Hornuf Lars , Drechsler Rolf
Published: November 2024

The success of idea crowdsourcing platforms relies on fostering a collaborative environment that encourages active user participation, measured by the quality and quantity of contributions and interactions. However, understanding the impact of peer interactions on user engagement and the innovation process remains challenging. While previous studies have focused on sentiment analysis, the contextual interpretation of peer feedback and its effects on engagement and innovation have yet to be explored. To address this knowledge gap, we propose a feature-based AI model that categorizes peer feedback based on its quality and polarity. Our model achieves 96% accuracy in identifying feedback quality (constructive vs. non-constructive and toxic vs. non-toxic) and feedback polarity (negative vs. positive). This contextual feedback categorization provides a foundation for quantitatively analyzing the impacts of feedback on user engagement and the innovation process. Our results show that positive and constructive peer feedback has a significantly positive effect, while toxic and negative peer feedback has a significantly negative impact on the process of idea generation, idea evaluation, and idea selection. Our results also indicate that inexperienced users are more susceptible to toxic feedback than experienced users. Based on these findings, we suggest a recommendation and reward system for incentivizing constructive feedback and preventing toxic feedback.
Governance of the Black Experience on Reddit: r/BlackPeopleTwitter as a Case Study in Supporting Sense of Virtual Community for Black Users
Authors: Smith C. Estelle , Klassen Shamika , Prinster Gale H. , Tan Chenhao , Keegan Brian C.
Published: November 2024

Despite frequent efforts to combat racism, almost no research has explored how to cultivate positive experiences of thriving Black culture on Reddit. In this case study, we surveyed users of r/BlackPeopleTwitter (BPT)--a large, popular subreddit that showcases screenshots of hilarious or insightful social media posts made by Black people (mainly from Black Twitter). Our research questions seek to understand users' motivations for visiting BPT, how they experience a sense of virtual community (SOVC) and membership in BPT, and how BPT's governance influences these experiences. We find that that users come to BPT primarily for excellent humor and entertainment, sociopolitical context on issues relevant to Black people, and/or partaking in the shared Black experience. Black users are more likely to report higher SOVC and to identify as members, whereas non-Black users are more likely to identify as guests or visitors to the community. To protect Black expression, the BPT moderation team implemented a governance strategy for verifying racial identity and limiting participation to only verified users in certain threads. Our data suggest that this policy is a contentious but influential aspect of SOVC that simultaneously constructs and challenges the sense of the subreddit existing as a safe space for Black people. We synthesize these results by discussing how: differing platform affordances across Twitter and Reddit combine to cultivate a thriving Black community on Reddit; the need for Black authenticity on an otherwise anonymous platform can guide future research in identity verification; and the limitations of this study motivate future work to support all marginalized communities online.
Race and Privacy in Broadcast Police Communications
Authors: Narayanan Venkit Pranav , Graziul Christopher , Goodman Miranda Ardith , Kenny Samantha Nicole , Wilson Shomir
Published: November 2024

Radios are essential for the operations of modern police departments, and they function as both a collaborative communication technology and a sociotechnical system. However, little prior research has examined their usage or their connections to individual privacy and the role of race in policing, two growing topics of concern in the US. As a case study, we examine the Chicago Police Department's (CPD's) use of broadcast police communications (BPC) to coordinate the activity of law enforcement officers (LEOs) in the city. From a recently assembled archive of 80,775 hours of BPC associated with CPD operations, we analyze human-generated text transcripts of radio transmissions broadcast 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM on August 10th, 2018 in one majority Black, one majority White, and one majority Hispanic area of the city (24 hours of audio) to explore four research questions: (1) Do BPC reflect reported racial disparities in policing? (2) How and when is gender, race/ethnicity, and age mentioned in BPC? (3) To what extent do BPC include sensitive information, and who is put at most risk by this practice? (4) To what extent can large language models (LLMs) heighten this risk? We explore the vocabulary and speech acts used by police in BPC, comparing mentions of personal characteristics to local demographics, the personal information shared over BPC, and the privacy concerns that it poses. Analysis indicates (a) policing professionals in the city of Chicago exhibit disproportionate attention to Black members of the public regardless of context, (b) sociodemographic characteristics like gender, race/ethnicity, and age are primarily mentioned in BPC about event information, and (c) disproportionate attention introduces disproportionate privacy risks for Black members of the public. This study shows BPC can provide a novel window into disproportionate attention (i.e., via radio communications) by law enforcement officers to specific racial groups, leading to increased privacy vulnerability for those groups, particularly Black males.
Effect of Explanation Conceptualisations on Trust in AI-assisted Credibility Assessment
Authors: Pareek Saumya , van Berkel Niels , Velloso Eduardo , Goncalves Jorge
Published: November 2024

As misinformation increasingly proliferates on social media platforms, it has become crucial to explore how to best convey automated news credibility assessments to end-users, and foster trust in fact-checking AIs. In this paper, we investigate how model-agnostic, natural language explanations influence trust and reliance on a fact-checking AI. We construct explanations from four Conceptualisation Validations (CVs) - namely consensual, expert, internal (logical), and empirical - which are foundational units of evidence that humans utilise to validate and accept new information. Our results show that providing explanations significantly enhances trust in AI, even in a fact-checking context where influencing pre-existing beliefs is often challenging, with different CVs causing varying degrees of reliance. We find consensual explanations to be the least influential, with expert, internal, and empirical explanations exerting twice as much influence. However, we also find that users could not discern whether the AI directed them towards the truth, highlighting the dual nature of explanations to both guide and potentially mislead. Further, we uncover the presence of automation bias and aversion during collaborative fact-checking, indicating how users' previously established trust in AI can moderate their reliance on AI judgements. We also observe the manifestation of a 'boomerang'/backfire effect often seen in traditional corrections to misinformation, with individuals who perceive AI as biased or untrustworthy doubling down and reinforcing their existing (in)correct beliefs when challenged by the AI. We conclude by presenting nuanced insights into the dynamics of user behaviour during AI-based fact-checking, offering important lessons for social media platforms.
NLPGuard: A Framework for Mitigating the Use of Protected Attributes by NLP Classifiers
Authors: Greco Salvatore , Zhou Ke , Capra Licia , Cerquitelli Tania , Quercia Daniele
Published: November 2024

AI regulations are expected to prohibit machine learning models from using sensitive attributes during training. However, the latest Natural Language Processing (NLP) classifiers, which rely on deep learning, operate as black-box systems, complicating the detection and remediation of such misuse. Traditional bias mitigation methods in NLP aim for comparable performance across different groups based on attributes like gender or race but fail to address the underlying issue of reliance on protected attributes. To partly fix that, we introduce
NLPGuard,
a framework for mitigating the reliance on protected attributes in NLP classifiers.
NLPGuard
takes an unlabeled dataset, an existing NLP classifier, and its training data as input, producing a modified training dataset that significantly reduces dependence on protected attributes without compromising accuracy.
NLPGuard
is applied to three classification tasks: identifying toxic language, sentiment analysis, and occupation classification. Our evaluation shows that current NLP classifiers heavily depend on protected attributes, with up to 23% of the most predictive words associated with these attributes. However,
NLPGuard
effectively reduces this reliance by up to 79%, while slightly improving accuracy.
Advice from a Doctor or AI? Understanding Willingness to Disclose Information Through Remote Patient Monitoring to Receive Health Advice
Authors: Mendel Tamir , Nov Oded , Wiesenfeld Batia
Published: November 2024

Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) devices transmit patients' medical indicators (e.g., blood pressure) from the patient's home testing equipment to their healthcare providers, in order to monitor chronic conditions such as hypertension. AI systems have the potential to enhance access to timely medical advice based on the data that RPM devices produce. In this paper, we report on three studies investigating how the severity of users' medical condition (normal vs. high blood pressure), security risk (low vs. modest vs. high risk), and medical advice source (human doctor vs. AI) influence user perceptions of advisor trustworthiness and willingness to disclose RPM-acquired information. We found that trust mediated the relationship between the advice source and users' willingness to disclose health information: users trust doctors more than AI and are more willing to disclose their RPM-acquired health information to a more trusted advice source. However, we unexpectedly discovered that conditional on trust, users disclose RPM-acquired information more readily to AI than to doctors. We observed that the advice source did not influence perceptions of security and privacy risks. We conclude by discussing how our findings can support the design of RPM applications.
The Politics of Fear and the Experience of Bangladeshi Religious Minority Communities Using Social Media Platforms
Authors: Rifat Mohammad Rashidujjaman , Das Dipto , Poddar Arpon , Jannat Mahiratul , Soden Robert , Semaan Bryan , Ahmed Syed Ishtiaque
Published: November 2024

Despite significant research on online harm, polarization, public deliberation, and justice, CSCW still lacks a comprehensive understanding of the experiences of religious minorities, particularly in relation to fear, as prominently evident in our study. Gaining faith-sensitive insights into the expression, participation, and inter-religious interactions on social media can contribute to CSCW's literature on online safety and interfaith communication. In pursuit of this goal, we conducted a six-month-long, interview-based study with the Hindu, Buddhist, and Indigenous communities in Bangladesh. Our study draws on an extensive body of research encompassing the spiral of silence, the cultural politics of fear, and communication accommodation to examine how social media use by religious minorities is influenced by fear, which is associated with social conformity, misinformation, stigma, stereotypes, and South Asian postcolonial memory. Moreover, we engage with scholarly perspectives from religious studies, justice, and South Asian violence and offer important critical insights and design lessons for the CSCW literature on public deliberation, justice, and interfaith communication.
Analyzing the Strategy of Propaganda using Inverse Reinforcement Learning: Evidence from the 2022 Russian Invasion of Ukraine
Authors: Geissler Dominique , Feuerriegel Stefan
Published: November 2024

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was accompanied by a large-scale, pro-Russian propaganda campaign on social media. However, the strategy behind the dissemination of propaganda has remained unclear, particularly how the online discourse was strategically shaped by the propagandists' community. Here, we analyze the strategy of the Twitter/X community using an inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) approach. Specifically, IRL allows us to model online behavior as a Markov decision process, where the goal is to infer the underlying reward structure that guides propagandists when interacting with users with a supporting or opposing stance toward the invasion. Thereby, we aim to understand empirically whether and how between-user interactions are strategically used to promote the proliferation of Russian propaganda. For this, we leverage a large-scale dataset with 349,455 posts with pro-Russian propaganda from 132,131 users. We show that bots and humans follow a different strategy: bots respond predominantly to pro-invasion messages, suggesting that they seek to drive virality; in contrast, messages indicating opposition primarily elicit responses from humans, suggesting that they tend to engage in critical discussions. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study analyzing the strategy behind propaganda from the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine through the lens of IRL.
Envisioning the Future of Burnout Support: Understanding Frontline Workers' Experiences in Nonprofit Gender-Based Violence Organizations
Authors: Chau Connie W. , Studd Hannah , Huang Denise , Norton Colleen , Kruzan Kaylee Payne , Jacobs Maia
Published: November 2024

Frontline workers (FLWs) provide essential services necessary for a functioning society, but the nature of their work contributes to their high rates of burnout. This burnout impacts not only their own health, but also has dire consequences for the people most in need of their services. Digital interventions for burnout may provide scalable, accessible, and cost-effective care. However, such interventions have been designed to intervene at the individual-level and have been inadequate in sustainably alleviating burnout. In addition, these interventions have not considered how we might integrate more effective organizational-level strategies or reflect FLWs' own experiences and the unique contexts of frontline work in their design. One important, yet understudied, domain of frontline work that experiences high rates of burnout is gender-based violence (GBV) service provision in nonprofit organizations. Using a community-based participatory research approach, we ran 8 co-design workshops with FLWs and supervisors from various nonprofit GBV organizations in a large metropolitan city in the United States to understand their experiences, hopes, and perceptions of technology for burnout support within their organizations. We found that participants greatly valued their support systems and supervisory relationships at work. And while there was a desire to use technology as support tools for burnout, participants were wary of how it could conflict with these support systems and important organizational values. We contribute a multilevel framework for digital burnout interventions and argue for a methodological shift to an assets-based approach, reframing the future of research and design of burnout interventions to center and reflect the needs, values, and lived experiences of FLWs.
How We See Changes How We Feel: Investigating the Effect of Visual Point-of-View on Decision-Making in VR Environments
Authors: Yin Michael , Xiao Robert
Published: November 2024

Virtual reality (VR) can immerse users into engaging experiences, affording opportunities to study behaviour in simulated contexts such as decision-making processes. However, methodological research into designing meaningful VR experiences - experiences that promote appreciation and deeper understanding of a work - is still underdeveloped. In this two-part study, we investigate how visual point-of-view (POV) in VR impacts feelings of meaningfulness and empathy as well as objective decision-making processes. Our study revolves around a VR application that situates users in moral dilemmas from three different POVs. Data from the choices made is augmented with self-reported subjective data. We find that, from different POVs, users' subjective feelings do show change; users show greater empathy for virtual agents and have an increasingly meaningful experience from a first-person perspective, even if this is not always reflected in changes in their decisions. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings in the context of VR application design.
Avatar Appearance and Behavior of Potential Harassers Affect Users' Perceptions and Response Strategies in Social Virtual Reality (VR): A Mixed-Methods Study
Authors: Wang Xuetong , Wang Ziyan , Zhang Mingmin , Yu Kangyou , Hui Pan , Fan Mingming
Published: November 2024

Sexual harassment has been recognized as a significant social issue. In recent years, the emergence of harassment in social virtual reality (VR) has become an important and urgent research topic. We employed a mixed-methods approach by conducting online surveys with VR users (
N
= 166) and semi-structured interviews with social VR users (
N
= 18) to investigate how users perceive sexual harassment in social VR, focusing on the influence of
avatar appearance.
Moreover, we derived users' response strategies to sexual harassment and gained insights on platform regulation. This study contributes to the research on sexual harassment in social VR by examining the moderating effect of avatar appearance on user perception of sexual harassment and uncovering the underlying reasons behind response strategies. Moreover, it presents novel prospects and challenges in platform design and regulation domains.
Simple Scores are Messy Signals: How Users Interpret Scores on Real Estate Platforms
Authors: Resor Elizabeth
Published: November 2024

Real estate platforms serve as an online version of traditional real estate listings, assembling comprehensive information for potential buyers and renters. However, along with traditional details like photos, a description of the property, and a price, these platform listings include supplementary information in the form of scores or ratings of schools, walkability, and crime. This information is presented with little explanatory context, as a simple numerical score or shaded map implying a hierarchy from better to worse. While these scores and maps are presented as self-evident, my research shows that people interpreted the scores in considerably varied ways. Different users, for example, could draw opposing conclusions from the same data. I present findings from 32 interviews with real estate platform users. In the context of housing decisions, I found people readily inferred meanings about protected groups, particularly about the racial makeup of neighborhoods. The use of maps and scores on online real estate platforms raises questions and concerns about their broader societal consequences. While real estate platforms likely consider their role to be a provider of information principally to an audience of people buying, selling, and renting real estate, I argue that they have become a form of consequential civic data with the potential to reshape urban life. Some real estate platforms are beginning to recognize this, removing sensitive information about crime, and acknowledging that they cannot present it effectively or responsibly.
"Actually I Can Count My Blessings": User-Centered Design of an Application to Promote Gratitude Among Young Adults
Authors: Bhattacharjee Ananya , Gong Zichen , Wang Bingcheng , Luckcock Timothy James , Watson Emma , Abellan Elena Allica , Gutman Leslie , Hsu Anne , Williams Joseph Jay
Published: November 2024

Regular practice of gratitude has the potential to enhance psychological wellbeing and foster stronger social connections among young adults. However, there is a lack of research investigating user needs and expectations regarding gratitude-promoting applications. To address this gap, we employed a user-centered design approach to develop a mobile application that facilitates gratitude practice. Our formative study involved 20 participants who utilized an existing application, providing insights into their preferences for organizing expressions of gratitude and the significance of prompts for reflection and mood labeling after working hours. Building on these findings, we conducted a deployment study with 26 participants using our custom-designed application, which confirmed the positive impact of structured options to guide gratitude practice and highlighted the advantages of passive engagement with the application during busy periods. Our study contributes to the field by identifying key design considerations for promoting gratitude among young adults.
Power and Play: Investigating "License to Critique" in Teams' AI Ethics Discussions
Authors: Widder David Gray , Dabbish Laura , Herbsleb James D. , Martelaro Nikolas
Published: November 2024

Past work has sought to design AI ethics interventions--such as checklists or toolkits--to help practitioners design more ethical AI systems. However, other work demonstrates how these interventions may instead serve to limit critique to that addressed within the intervention, while rendering broader concerns illegitimate. In this paper, drawing on work examining how standards enact discursive closure and how power relations affect whether and how people raise critique, we recruit three corporate teams, and one activist team, each with prior context working with one another, to play a game designed to trigger broad discussion around AI ethics. We use this as a point of contrast to trigger reflection on their teams' past discussions, examining factors which may affect their ''license to critique'' in AI ethics discussions. We then report on how particular affordances of this game may influence discussion, and find that the hypothetical context created in the game is unlikely to be a viable mechanism for real world change. We discuss how power dynamics within a group and notions of ''scope'' affect whether people may be willing to raise critique in AI ethics discussions, and discuss our finding that games are unlikely to enable direct changes to products or practice, but may be more likely to allow members to find critically-aligned allies for future collective action.