University of Michigan School of Information (UMSI) faculty and students are presenting nearly thirty papers at the 2021 ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) October 23-27. 

Fourteen UMSI researchers have earned an honorable mention designation for their papers, and nine received the conference’s Diversity and Inclusion Recognition for their research. 

PhD student Kat Roemmich and assistant professor Nazanin Andalibi earned an Honorable Mention award for “Data Subjects' Conceptualizations of and Attitudes Toward Automatic Emotion Recognition-Enabled Wellbeing Interventions on Social Media.” The paper addresses a gap in knowledge around what data subjects (i.e., people about whom data is collected or processed to enable emotion recognition) think about automatic emotion recognition-enabled wellbeing interventions.

Assistant professor Oliver L. Haimson, PhD student Daniel Delmonaco, Master of Science in Information student Peipei Nie, and Bachelor of Science in Information student Andrea Wegner received an Honorable Mention award and a Diversity and Inclusion Recognition for “Disproportionate Removals and Differing Content Moderation Experiences for Conservative, Transgender, and Black Social Media Users: Marginalization and Moderation Gray Areas.” The paper explores which types of social media users have content and accounts removed more frequently than others, what types of content and accounts are removed, and how content removed may differ between groups. 

2021 Master of Health Informatics graduate Nadia Karizat, PhD student Daniel Delmonaco, assistant professor Nazanin Andalibi and co-author Motahhare Eslami (Carnegie Mellon University) earned an Honorable Mention award for “Algorithmic Folk Theories and Identity: How TikTok Users Co-Produce Knowledge of Identity and Engage in Algorithmic Resistance.” The paper addresses a gap in knowledge around how social media users understand the interplay between identity and algorithmic processes online, and if and how such understandings shape their behavior on social platforms in return. 

Assistant professor Robin Brewer, associate professor Sarita Schoenebeck, and University of Michigan co-authors Kerry Lee and Haripriya Suryadevara took an Honorable Mention award for “Challenging Passive Social Media Use: Older Adults as Caregivers Online.” The paper shows how older adults’ decisions to not click or comment on content can involve engaged kinds of social media use even if they are not visible to other users or to the platform. 

Recent PhD graduate Joey Chiao-Yin Hsiao and co-author Frank Bentley received an Honorable Mention award for "Exploring Email-Prompted Information Needs," based on Hsiao's internship work at Yahoo last summer. The paper studies "email-prompted information needs," or instances where messages require additional information that users need to look for outside of the email itself, such as store hours, bill details or related news articles.

PhD student Ju Yeon Jung, professor Mark S. Ackerman, professor emeritus John King, and co-author Thomas Steinberger earned an Honorable Mention award for “Negotiating Repairedness: How Artifacts Under Repair Become Contingently Stabilized.” The paper examines “repairedness,” or the contingently stable, working version of an artifact under repair that is negotiated out of multiple possible versions to bring about the temporary conclusion of repair work. 

Research fellow Karen L. Boyd received an Honorable Mention award for “Datasheets for Datasets help ML engineers notice and understand ethical issues in training data.” The paper discovers what kinds of ethical considerations machine learning engineers recognize, how they build understanding, and what decisions they make when working with a real-world dataset.

PhD students Maulishree Pandey, Vaishnav Kameswaran and Hrishikesh V. Rao, associate professor Sile O’Modhrain and assistant professor Steve Oney received a Diversity and Inclusion Recognition for “Understanding Accessibility and Collaboration in Programming for People with Visual Impairments.” 

UMSI researchers were also involved in the planning and execution of CSCW 2021. Assistant professor Gabriela Marcu is associate chair on the Program committee. Assistant professor Nazanin Andalibi is communication and outreach co-chair on the Organizing committee and a member of the Awards committee. Assistant professor Oliver Haimson is proceedings and publications co-chair on the Organizing committee. 

2019 UMSI Master of Health Informatics graduate Dima Chaar, who is now pursuing a PhD at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, is a member of the research team from the University of Michigan and Michigan State University that earned a Best Paper award for “Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining: Exploring Experiential Knowledge and Assets of Family Caregivers.” 

CSCW is the leading conference for presenting research in the design and use of technologies that affect groups, organizations and communities. The conference brings together top researchers and practitioners from academia and industry who are interested in both the technical and social aspects of collaboration. 

This year’s conference will be held virtually. 

See the complete list of all U-M and UMSI participation in CSCW 2021 here.