Technology-mediated scams are a pervasive and enduring form of digital harm affecting older adults. While prior research has largely emphasized prevention, awareness, and risk perception, comparatively little attention has been paid to what follows after a scam occurs. Conceptualizing the scam as an unfolding event, we argue that each stage of the scam—before, during, and after—is shaped by distinct sociotechnical arrangements and relational dynamics that demand tailored forms of analysis and intervention. Through a multi-method study, we examine the during and after, paying specific attention to the post-scam, during which older adults navigate the affective, social, and material aftermath of scams. In doing so, we extend HCI’s engagement with digital harm by articulating the post-scam as a critical site of coordination, redress, and justice-seeking, offering new directions for research and intervention.

Abstract Handled by a constellation of public and private institutions, the COVID-19 vaccine infrastructure in the U.S. was largely fragmented when it first emerged. By looking into the early phases of the COVID-19 vaccination distribution among older adults in the U.S. state of Florida, this work attends to the “last-mile logistics” of vaccine infrastructure—the final leg of distribution, where vaccines meet their intended end consumers. Drawing on in-depth interviews with older adults and the volunteers who supported them in securing vaccination appointments, we illustrate the complexities of the last mile and the challenges faced by older adults in navigating distribution. We then demonstrate how volunteers and older adults came together as an emerging assemblage to collectively perform what we term “last-mile work”—a specific form of infrastructuring undertaken in the last mile to resolve localized logistic or operational challenges within a larger infrastructural arrangement. This paper introduces last-mile work as a critical yet under-theorized form of infrastructuring that is indispensable to infrastructure’s everyday function. We argue that last-mile work offers an important analytical lens and empirical site for future infrastructural investigations in CSCW research and design. It creates new entry points to rethink the assumed relationships between infrastructuring work and temporal breakdowns, while also surfacing critical questions of labor, power, and (in)visibility within the last mile of infrastructures.

In our contemporary moment, there exists a hegemonic design practice and a general social desire to retain information. With the help of sociotechnical platforms and other contemporary technologies, information has changed its temporal and spatial boundaries, creating unbounded, algorithmic, and emergent forms of retention. The consequences of such retention are numerous, ranging from an overabundance of autobiographical information that cannot be fully understood by the individual to the improper use and economization of such information by state and corporation alike. Within this context, this paper investigates a counter-hegemonic practice of forgetting, specifically from the perspective of human-computer interaction and computer-supported cooperative work research, with additional insight drawn from adjacent fields. In doing so, we present forgetting as a significant area of research with HCI and CSCW, a burgeoning and contradictory space that may offer solutions to issues we face within a moment of persistence by default. This paper also explores potential directions for future research and design on forgetting in HCI and CSCW through an investigation of an art piece by Chinese artist Song Dong.

Aging in place refers to the enabling of individuals to age comfortably and securely within their own homes and communities. Aging in place relies on robust infrastructure, prompting the development and implementation of both human-led care services and information and communication technologies to provide support. Through a long-term ethnographic study that includes semi-structured interviews with 24 stakeholders, we consider these human- and technology-driven care infrastructures for aging in place, examining their origins, deployment, interactions with older adults, and challenges. In doing so, we reconsider the value of these different forms of older adult care, highlighting the various issues associated with using, for instance, health monitoring technology or appointment scheduling systems to care for older adults aging in place. We suggest that technology should take a supportive, not substitutive role in older adult care infrastructure. Furthermore, we note that designing for aging in place should move beyond a narrow focus on independence in one's home to instead encompass the broader community and its dynamics.

Memory artifacts are personal and collective belongings that elicit deliberate or involuntary memories. They are significant as objects of continuity, vessels for identity, and links to past relationships and history-for individuals, families, and communities. Drawing from in-depth interviews and cultural probe sessions with 16 individuals over 65, we consider how older adults curate and interact with their personal artifacts that embody and inform memory. Participants' hands-on experiences with memory artifacts uncover a heterogeneous set of personal curation practices and identify tensions that result from the competing goals of creating a legible narrative or legacy for themselves, their family, and their communities. The transition from physical to digital memory artifacts often perpetuates tension but can also create moments of reflection. These findings contribute a set of design considerations for supporting curation practices. This paper joins and expands upon CSCW scholarship regarding the importance of memory artifacts and the ongoing challenges of retaining individual memory and history over time, which, if managed effectively, can benefit and sustain family and community history at large.

In early December 2022, China's zero-COVID policy came to an end. For Chinese citizens, an imaginary of safety predicated on collective action and state care was replaced with a general focus on individualized responsibility for maintaining one's health. This expedited policy reversal had the unintended effect of infecting around 80% of China's population in one month, leading to a period of confusion, anxiety, and infection. One way of obtaining safety in a precarious time was to acquire medical resources. Through an online ethnographic investigation, we trace the acquisition of Paxlovid, an antiviral medication that had its distribution within China complicated by geopolitical tension and supply issues. By attending to the precarity of Chinese citizens at home and abroad, we show how Paxlovid was desired in both the present tense for the presently ill and in the future tense as an anticipatory form of safety. We use the analytical lens of anticipation work to unpack individual, collective, and state anticipatory practices supported by various social media platforms within and across borders. In doing so, we highlight moments of friction between and among various actors to argue that attending to affect, precarity, and practices in moments of conflict is critical to understanding the complexities of computer-supported cooperative work.

Visual online communities can present accessibility challenges to older adults or people with vision and motor disabilities. Motivated by this challenge, accessibility and HCI researchers have called for voice-based communities to support aging and disability. This paper extends prior work on voice community design and short-term use by providing empirical data on how people interact with voice communities over time and intentional instances of non-use. We conducted a one-year study with 43 blind and low vision older adults, of whom 21 used a voice-based community. We use vignettes to unpack five different voice community member roles - the obligatory poster, routine poster, cross-platform lurker, busy socialite, and visual expertise seeker - and discuss community interactions over time. Findings show how participation varied based on engagement in other communities and ways that participants sought interaction. We discuss (1) how to design voice communities for member roles and (2) the implications of synchronous and asynchronous voice community interaction in voice-only communities.

Independent movie theaters (IMTs) are a part of the cultural infrastructure that offers shared spaces for patron communities to access, share, and engage with cultural artifacts. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, IMTs were mandated to shut down, resulting in unanticipated infrastructural breakdown. Drawing insights from a preliminary survey and interviews with staff members from 18 IMTs in the U.S., this paper attends to how this breakdown disrupted art and community engagement within patron communities. We investigate the sociotechnical practices of maintaining cultural infrastructure through 1) collaborating with community partners and external stakeholders, 2) screening films through online virtual cinema platforms, and 3) retaining community members through online platforms. Our work highlights the tensions and invisible human labor in this maintenance work. Together, this work intends to foreground cultural infrastructure and discuss how HCI can support and contribute to the design and oft-invisible maintenance of cultural infrastructure.