Digital climate actions are an important aspect in centring voices in climate activism and therefore, it is important to study how digital channels support or hinder the actions of climate activists. Specifically, due to identity-related factors, people of colour (POC) could feel marginalised and othered, making it difficult to fit in in climate communities but online anonymity might help relieve these concerns. However, little research informs us what digital platforms POC actually use for building and engaging in climate communities including social media platforms (e.g., Facebook and Instagram), instant messaging channels (e.g., WhatsApp and Telegram), microblogging (e.g., Twitter), online newsletters and petitions and how these platforms and their anonymity features support or do not support their participation. Therefore, the current mixed-methods survey study was conducted to investigate what POC's choices of digital platforms are and how anonymity features support their participation in digital climate actions including their sense of safety and belonging. The results from 264 participants of five racial backgrounds i.e., White, Black, South Asian, Central, East and South East (CESE) Asians and mixed race, showed that there were different patterns in digital platform usage where most participants of colour had more distributed platform choices than White participants who were more likely to engage on identified sites such as Facebook and petitions. We also found that POC are more likely to engage on encrypted communication channels such as Telegram and WhatsApp and some anonymous actions than White participants. Results understanding the effects of anonymity reinforced that anonymity is important for POC's engagement because of safety reasons, however, being able to identify other POC is also important to their engagement as they might feel safer, giving them more courage to engage unanonymously. POC's need for anonymity, therefore, presented a contradictory but interesting paradox. Our study contributes to highlighting the importance of pluralistic and inclusive frameworks including trauma-informed computing and intersectionality in technological design which emphasises aspects of individual safety, community and digital platform trust and community support, collaboration and intersectional needs.

Participation in climate activism is often facilitated by joining groups on digital platforms, for online and in-person participation in the movement. However, despite the easy access to communities digitally, people of colour (POC) are underrepresented in the UK in climate activism. Little research provides insight into why the voices of POC are underrepresented and how to level the playing field for participation in climate activism, which is just as important to POC. To investigate this, we conducted a qualitative semi-structured interview study with POC who are active in the climate movement (N=12). We identified five main themes: (i) gaining membership to the climate activism community, (ii) experiencing challenges in belonging with respect to identity characteristics, (iii) participating in protest through relevant issues and values, (iv) feeling fear due to differences and marginalisation, and (v) developing strategies for control and utilising anonymity. Our findings show how people's racial and other minoritised identity is crucial in influencing their sense of belonging and community and in turn their participation in climate activism and perhaps other opinion-based movements. For movements to be more inclusive, we urge the HCI and CSCW community to rethink designs influenced by structures of power and centre diverse values and issues instead of universal ones to amplify the voices of minoritised identities. Suggestions on how technologies could achieve this are discussed.

Virtual meetings are critical for remote work because of the need for synchronous collaboration in the absence of in-person interactions. In-meeting multitasking is closely linked to people’s productivity and wellbeing. However, we currently have limited understanding of multitasking in remote meetings and its potential impact. In this paper, we present what we believe is the most comprehensive study of remote meeting multitasking behavior through an analysis of a large-scale telemetry dataset collected from February to May 2020 of U.S. Microsoft employees and a 715-person diary study. Our results demonstrate that intrinsic meeting characteristics such as size, length, time, and type, significantly correlate with the extent to which people multitask, and multitasking can lead to both positive and negative outcomes. Our findings suggest important best-practice guidelines for remote meetings (e.g., avoid important meetings in the morning) and design implications for productivity tools (e.g., support positive remote multitasking).

The world is entering a new normal of hybrid organisations, in which it will be common that some members are co-located and others are remote. Hybridity is rife with asymmetries that affect our sense of belonging in an organisational space. This paper reports a study of an XR Telepresence technology probe to explore how remote workers might present themselves and be perceived as an equal and unique embodied being in a workplace. VROOM (Virtual Robot Overlay for Online Meetings) augments a standard Mobile Robotic Telepresence experience by (1) adding a virtual avatar overlay of the remote person to the local space, viewable through a HoloLens worn by the local user, through which the remote user can gesture and express themselves, and (2) giving the remote user an immersive 360° view of the local space, captured by a 360° camera on the robot, which they can view through a VR headset. We ran a study to understand how pairs of participants (one local and one remote) collaborate using VROOM in a search and word-guessing game. Our findings illustrate that there is much potential for a system like VROOM to support dynamic collaborative activities in which embodiment, gesturing, mobility, spatial awareness, and non-verbal expressions are important. However, there are also challenges to be addressed, specifically around proprioception, the mixing of a physical robot body with a virtual human avatar, uncertainties of others' views and capabilities, fidelity of expressions, and the appearance of the avatar. We conclude with further design suggestions and recommendations for future work.

Public opinion suggests that it is still unclear how people will react when automated vehicles (AVs) emerge on the roads. Fatal accidents involving AVs have received wide media attention, possibly disproportionate to their frequency. How does the framing of such stories affect public perceptions of AVs? Few drivers have encountered AVs, but how do they imagine interacting with AVs in the near future? This survey study with 600 UK and Hong Kong drivers addressed these two questions. After reading news 'vignettes' reporting an imagined car crash, respondents presented with subjective information perceived AVs as less safe than those presented with factual information. We draw implications for news media framing effects to counter negative newsflow with factual information. Respondents were presented with another imagined interaction with human-driven and AVs and did not differentiate between the two. Results from other variables e.g., first and third person framing, and cultural differences are also reported.

Automated driving will mean that people can engage in other activities and an important concern will be how to alert the driver to critical events that require their intervention. This study evaluates how various levels of assertiveness of voice command in a semi-AV and different degrees of immersion of a non-driving task may affect people's attention on the road. In a simulated set-up, 20 participants were required to execute actions on the steering wheel when a voice command was given while playing a mobile game. Regardless of how immersed the driver was in the game, a more assertive voice resulted in faster reaction time to the instructions and was perceived as more urgent than a less assertive voice. Automotive systems should use an assertive voice to effectively grab people's attention. This is effective even when they are engaged in an immersive secondary task.