AI development for healthcare aims to enhance medical decision-making through risk evaluation. Scholars have focused on improving the accuracy of Breast Cancer AI Risk Assessment Tools (BC-AIRAT), yet these tools remain underutilized in clinical practices. This provides an opportunity to explore how these tools are used and how they may support risk communications. We conducted a three-phase study, with clinicians and patients, in the context of the United States healthcare system, including formative interviews that surface the challenges of BC-AIRAT practices, design probe re-purposing BC-AIRAT as supporting risk communications, and design probe-driven interviews with diverse stakeholders. Our findings surface the gap and opportunity for designing AI-mediated risk communication tool, highlighting the participants’ reflections on AI for managing risk assessment workflows, mediating fragmented breast health guidelines, and delivering information to patients for proactive decision making. We conclude with design implications for using AI as a mediator in breast cancer risk communication.

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are increasingly prevalent in youths’ lives, despite documentation and concern of potential algorithmic harm. With responsible AI (RAI) efforts aiming to address harms, youth are largely overlooked as contributors, despite being stakeholders of AI. This paper explores perspectives on challenges, barriers, and opportunities of youth participation in responsibly creating AI. Through workshops with 16 teens and 11 parents, as well as interviews with 8 AI practitioners, we find that while all groups recognize the value of youth perspectives, the opinions of those not directly paying for AI are not prioritized. Many parents were optimistic about their youths’ ability to contribute, while youth showed a desire to contribute, coupled with an awareness of their strengths and limitations. Practitioners saw the potential of youth to contribute but not necessarily as empowered decision makers in RAI processes. We offer insights on involving youth in RAI, balancing protection with agency.

Despite their increasing capabilities, text-to-image generative AI systems are known to produce biased, offensive, and otherwise problematic outputs. While recent advancements have supported testing and auditing of generative AI, existing auditing methods still face challenges in supporting effectively explore the vast space of AI-generated outputs in a structured way. To address this gap, we conducted formative studies with five AI auditors and synthesized five design goals for supporting systematic AI audits. Based on these insights, we developed Vipera, an interactive auditing interface that employs multiple visual cues including a scene graph to facilitate image sensemaking and inspire auditors to explore and hierarchically organize the auditing criteria. Additionally, Vipera leverages LLM-powered suggestions to facilitate exploration of unexplored auditing directions. Through a controlled experiment with 24 participants experienced in AI auditing, we demonstrate Vipera's effectiveness in helping auditors navigate large AI output spaces and organize their analyses while engaging with diverse criteria.

Responsible AI (RAI) tools—checklists, templates, and governance processes—often engage RAI champions, individuals intrinsically motivated to advocate ethical practices, but fail to reach non-champions, who frequently dismiss them as bureaucratic tasks. To explore this gap, we shadowed meetings and interviewed data scientists at an organization, finding that practitioners perceived RAI as irrelevant to their work. Building on these insights and theoretical foundations, we derived design principles for engaging non-champions, and introduced sticky stories—narratives of unexpected ML harms designed to be concrete, severe, surprising, diverse, and relevant, unlike widely circulated media to which practitioners are desensitized. Using a compound AI system, we generated and evaluated sticky stories through human and LLM assessments at scale, confirming they embodied the intended qualities. In a study with 29 practitioners, we found that, compared to regular stories, sticky stories significantly increased the engagement time on harm identification, broadened the range of harms recognized, and fostered deeper reflection.

Around 90% of CEOs see AI as the “most critical technology for ensuring future profitability and competitiveness.” At the same time, up to 95% of AI projects fail. Currently, little is known about the leaders who approve and guide AI initiatives. We call them AI Deciders. This study investigates how AI Deciders reason about AI benefits and risks, and how their knowledge about AI influences their decisions on what and where to innovate. We interviewed AI Deciders across diverse organizations. We found no ideation. AI Deciders just consider one concept at a time. Design and HCI played no role in deciding what to build. Many AI Deciders overestimate AI’s benefits while underestimating risks. Based on these findings, we identified opportunities for design and HCI to support impactful and responsible AI innovation. This should reduce AI project failure.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is ubiquitous in K-12 youths' everyday lives. However, it has become increasingly well-documented that AI can cause harm by reflecting and amplifying societal biases. While many youth are not currently empowered to engage in broader responsible AI discourse and processes, there is great potential. Foundational to engaging in critical conversations is ability to critique AI. We present the RAD framework, designed to scaffold critique of AI in three steps: Recognize (harms of AI), Analyze (societal aspects of AI harms), and Deliberate (what more responsible AI could be). We ran a workshop study with racially diverse middle school girls (N = 21) to investigate its effectiveness. We found that through being scaffolded with the framework, the youth could articulate biases that they saw in an AI scenario and consider how biases may impact different stakeholders. They then could contemplate how different stakeholders had varying amounts of power in the AI scenario and what that meant in terms of creating more responsible AI systems and processes. After participating in the study, the youth felt more strongly about voicing their opinions about AI with others. The RAD framework and activities work toward emboldening youths' engagement in critical discourse about AI.

There has been growing interest from both practitioners and researchers in engaging end users in AI auditing, to draw upon users' unique knowledge and lived experiences. However, we know little about how to effectively scaffold end users in auditing in ways that can generate actionable insights for AI practitioners. Through formative studies with both users and AI practitioners, we first identified a set of design goals to support user-engaged AI auditing. We then developed WeAudit, a workflow and system that supports end users in auditing AI both individually and collectively. We evaluated WeAudit through a three-week user study with user auditors and interviews with industry Generative AI practitioners. Our findings offer insights into how WeAudit supports users in noticing and reflecting upon potential AI harms and in articulating their findings in ways that industry practitioners can act upon. Based on our observations and feedback from both users and practitioners, we identify several opportunities to better support user engagement in AI auditing processes. We discuss implications for future research to support effective and responsible user engagement in AI auditing.

Equity is crucial to the ethical implications in technology development. However, implementing equity in practice comes with complexities and nuances. In response, the research community, especially the human-computer interaction (HCI) and Fairness community, has endeavored to integrate equity into technology design, addressing issues of societal inequities. With such increasing efforts, it is yet unclear why and how researchers discuss equity and its integration into technology, what research has been conducted, and what gaps need to be addressed. We conducted a systematic literature review on equity and technology, collecting and analyzing 202 papers published in HCI and Fairness-focused venues. Amidst the substantial growth of relevant publications within the past four years, we deliver three main contributions: (1) we elaborate a comprehensive understanding researchers' motivations for studying equity and technology, (2) we illustrate the different equity definitions and frameworks utilized to discuss equity, (3) we characterize the key themes addressing interventions as well as tensions and trade-offs when advancing and integrating equity to technology. Based on our findings, we elaborate an equity framework for researchers who seek to address existing gaps and advance equity in technology.

There have been increasing calls within HCI to build sustained partnerships with communities that go beyond surface-level engagement. However, little is known about how communities view such partnerships and their outcomes. In collaboration with a community-based organization, we co-analyzed a series of interviews to understand the impacts of university-led research initiatives and publicly deployed technologies on local communities, and to explore strategies for more equitable community-university partnerships. Our findings reveal that local communities often perceive technology companies and academic institutions as potential threats due to their shared role in a series of projects, including predictive policing, surveillance, and broader concerns on technological bias and exclusion against minoritized groups. While interviewees named material benefits, sustained relationships, and meaningful accountability as desirable from universities, they pointed to academia's institutional priorities that pose barriers to forming effective partnerships. Drawing from la paperson's concept of a Third University, we argue that researchers and academic institutions must contend with these complexities, while taking a decolonizing approach to community-university partnerships through the lens of revestment.

On online platforms, algorithms help us build and manage our relationships. However, their invisible interventions might also pose harm to these connections. Dating platforms offer a prime example where, despite extensive research on human-inflicted harm, the potential harm from the algorithms themselves, and user strategies for mitigating them, remains largely unexplored. In our analysis of 7,043 reviews and interviews with 30 Tinder users, we unveiled how users perceive algorithmic harm as damaging self-esteem, sabotaging potential relationships, encouraging antisocial behavior, and misrepresenting or marginalizing certain identities. We introduce a new algorithmic folk theory, the "conflict of interest" theory, perceived to perpetuate these harms. This theory encapsulates users' sense of a contradiction between the dating platform's promise of finding the perfect partner (leading to discontinued use of Tinder) and its commercial interest in retaining users to increase revenue. Users suspected various algorithmic processes pursuant to this theory, such as (a) throttling profile visibility, (b) manipulating users' matches, and (c) recommending large quantities of profiles that will not lead to matches. They also described various strategies in resistance or defense of these suspected algorithmic processes, such as engaging in counter-intuitive behaviour to disrupt the unfavorable algorithmic processes or leveraging location based filtering for match variety and safety. We conclude by discussing how the perceived algorithmic harms can inform the development of new algorithmic implementations that balance both user and company interests.

Public sector agencies aim to innovate not just for efficiency but also to enhance equity. Despite the growing adoption of data-driven decision-making systems in the public sector, efforts to integrate equity as a primary goal often fall short. This typically arises from inadequate early-stage involvement of underserved stakeholders and prevalent misunderstandings concerning the authentic meaning of equity from these stakeholders' perspectives. Our research seeks to address this gap by actively involving undersevered stakeholders in the process of envisioning the integration of equity within public sector data-driven decisions, particularly in the context of a building department in a Northeastern mid-sized U.S. city. Applying a speed dating method with storyboards, we explore diverse equity-centric futures within the realm of local business development, a domain where small businesses, particularly women-and minority-owned businesses, historically confront inequitable distribution of public services. We explored three essential aspects of equity: monitoring equity, resource allocation prioritization, as well as information and equity. Our findings illuminate the complexities of integrating equity into data-driven decisions, offering nuanced insights about the needs of stakeholders. We found that attempts to monitor and incorporate equity goals into public sector decision-making can unexpectedly backfire, inadvertently sparking community apprehension and potentially exacerbating existing inequities. Small business owners, including those identifying as women-and minority-owned, advocated against the use of demographic-based data in equity-focused data-driven decision-making in the public sector, instead emphasizing factors such as community needs, application complexity, and uncertainties inherent in small businesses. Drawing from these insights, we propose design implications to assist designers of public sector data-driven decision-making systems to better accommodate equity considerations.

This paper introduces an innovative methodology for producing high-quality 3D lung CT images guided by textual information. While diffusion-based generative models are increasingly used in medical imaging, current state-of-the-art approaches are limited to low-resolution outputs and underutilize radiology reports' abundant information. The radiology reports can enhance the generation process by providing additional guidance and offering fine-grained control over the synthesis of images. Nevertheless, expanding text-guided generation to high-resolution 3D images poses significant memory and anatomical detail-preserving challenges. Addressing the memory issue, we introduce a hierarchical scheme that uses a modified UNet architecture. We start by synthesizing low-resolution images conditioned on the text, serving as a foundation for subsequent generators for complete volumetric data. To ensure the anatomical plausibility of the generated samples, we provide further guidance by generating vascular, airway, and lobular segmentation masks in conjunction with the CT images. The model demonstrates the capability to use textual input and segmentation tasks to generate synthesized images. Algorithmic comparative assessments and blind evaluations conducted by 10 board-certified radiologists indicate that our approach exhibits superior performance compared to the most advanced models based on GAN and diffusion techniques, especially in accurately retaining crucial anatomical features such as fissure lines and airways. This innovation introduces novel possibilities. This study focuses on two main objectives: (1) the development of a method for creating images based on textual prompts and anatomical components, and (2) the capability to generate new images conditioning on anatomical elements. The advancements in image generation can be applied to enhance numerous downstream tasks.

Recent years have seen growing interest among both researchers and practitioners in user-engaged approaches to algorithm auditing, which directly engage users in detecting problematic behaviors in algorithmic systems. However, we know little about industry practitioners’ current practices and challenges around user-engaged auditing, nor what opportunities exist for them to better leverage such approaches in practice. To investigate, we conducted a series of interviews and iterative co-design activities with practitioners who employ user-engaged auditing approaches in their work. Our findings reveal several challenges practitioners face in appropriately recruiting and incentivizing user auditors, scaffolding user audits, and deriving actionable insights from user-engaged audit reports. Furthermore, practitioners shared organizational obstacles to user-engaged auditing, surfacing a complex relationship between practitioners and user auditors. Based on these findings, we discuss opportunities for future HCI research to help realize the potential (and mitigate risks) of user-engaged auditing in industry practice.

Recent years have witnessed an interesting phenomenon in which users come together to interrogate potentially harmful algorithmic behaviors they encounter in their everyday lives. Researchers have started to develop theoretical and empirical understandings of these user-driven audits, with a hope to harness the power of users in detecting harmful machine behaviors. However, little is known about users’ participation and their division of labor in these audits, which are essential to support these collective efforts in the future. Through collecting and analyzing 17,984 tweets from four recent cases of user-driven audits, we shed light on patterns of users’ participation and engagement, especially with the top contributors in each case. We also identified the various roles users’ generated content played in these audits, including hypothesizing, data collection, amplification, contextualization, and escalation. We discuss implications for designing tools to support user-driven audits and users who labor to raise awareness of algorithm bias.

Artificial intelligence (AI) literacy is especially important for those who may not be well-represented in technology design. We worked with ten Black girls in fifth and sixth grade from a predominantly Black school to understand their perceptions around fair and accountable AI and how they can have an empowered role in the creation of AI. Thematic analysis of discussions and activity artifacts from a summer camp and after-school session revealed a number of findings around how Black girls: perceive AI, primarily consider fairness as niceness and equality (but may need support considering other notions, such as equity), consider accountability, and envision a just future. We also discuss how the learners can be positioned as decision-making designers in creating AI technology, as well as how AI literacy learning experiences can be empowering.

Youth regularly use technology driven by artificial intelligence (AI). However, it is increasingly well-known that AI can cause harm on small and large scales, especially for those underrepresented in tech fields. Recently, users have played active roles in surfacing and mitigating harm from algorithmic bias. Despite being frequent users of AI, youth have been under-explored as potential contributors and stakeholders to the future of AI. We consider three notions that may be at the root of youth facing barriers to playing an active role in responsible AI, which are youth (1) cannot understand the technical aspects of AI, (2) cannot understand the ethical issues around AI, and (3) need protection from serious topics related to bias and injustice. In this study, we worked with youth (N = 30) in first through twelfth grade and parents (N = 6) to explore how youth can be part of identifying algorithmic bias and designing future systems to address problematic technology behavior. We found that youth are capable of identifying and articulating algorithmic bias, often in great detail. Participants suggested different ways users could give feedback for AI that reflects their values of diversity and inclusion. Youth who may have less experience with computing or exposure to societal structures can be supported by peers or adults with more of this knowledge, leading to critical conversations about fairer AI. This work illustrates youths' insights, suggesting that they should be integrated in building a future of responsible AI.

Recent work in HCI suggests that users can be powerful in surfacing harmful algorithmic behaviors that formal auditing approaches fail to detect. However, it is not well understood how users are often able to be so effective, nor how we might support more effective user-driven auditing. To investigate, we conducted a series of think-aloud interviews, diary studies, and workshops, exploring how users find and make sense of harmful behaviors in algorithmic systems, both individually and collectively. Based on our findings, we present a process model capturing the dynamics of and influences on users’ search and sensemaking behaviors. We find that 1) users’ search strategies and interpretations are heavily guided by their personal experiences with and exposures to societal bias; and 2) collective sensemaking amongst multiple users is invaluable in user-driven algorithm audits. We offer directions for the design of future methods and tools that can better support user-driven auditing.

Algorithmic systems help manage the governance of digital platforms featuring user-generated content, including how money is distributed to creators from the profits a platform earns from advertising on this content. However, creators producing content about disadvantaged populations have reported that these kinds of systems are biased, having associated their content with prohibited or unsafe content, leading to what creators believed were error-prone decisions to demonetize their videos. Motivated by these reports, we present the results of 20 interviews with YouTube creators and a content analysis of videos, tweets, and news about demonetization cases to understand YouTubers' perceptions of demonetization affecting videos featuring disadvantaged or vulnerable populations, as well as creator responses to demonetization, and what kinds of tools and infrastructure support they desired. We found creators had concerns about YouTube's algorithmic system stereotyping content featuring vulnerable demographics in harmful ways, for example by labeling it "unsafe'' for children or families -- creators believed these demonetization errors led to a range of economic, social, and personal harms. To provide more context to these findings, we analyzed and report on the technique a few creators used to audit YouTube's algorithms to learn what could cause the demonetization of videos featuring LGBTQ people, culture and/or social issues. In response to the varying beliefs about the causes and harms of demonetization errors, we found our interviewees wanted more reliable information and statistics about demonetization cases and errors, more control over their content and advertising, and better economic security.

How do power dynamics and value conflicts affect our ability to design and maintain socio-technical algorithmic processes? In this paper, we study the SIGCHI student volunteer (SV) selection process that uses a weighted semi-randomized algorithm to recruit a desired pool of volunteers. Our interviews with the community members showed that the process is complex and socio-technical; the algorithm's outputs are interpreted and adjusted by the conference organizers to reflect the community values while ensuring the selection of effective volunteers to help with organizing the conference. This provides a stage in which the power dynamics and value conflicts among the stakeholders play salient roles in determining how the process was perceived and envisioned. For instance, non-organizers of the conference found the algorithm used in the selection process to be a power-balancer that places a check on the organizers who oversee the process. However, even with a participatory process to elicit the algorithm's weights, the power dynamics and value conflicts between the participants made it difficult to reach a consensus on what the SV selection process should consider and prioritize. Our findings highlight the importance of value transparency -- the type of transparency that focuses on explaining why a decision was made rather than how it was made -- as a mechanism for resolving such conflicts. Based on our findings, we lay out design recommendations that can guide communities to better design and maintain algorithmic socio-technical processes over time in the face of power dynamics and value conflicts.

The power, opacity, and bias of algorithmic systems have opened up new research areas for bringing transparency, fairness, and accountability into these systems. In this talk, I will revisit these lines of work, and argue that while they are critical to making algorithmic systems responsible, fresh perspectives are needed when these efforts fall short. I particularly discuss the necessity of algorithmic literacy and public education about the shortcomings of existing transparency and fairness efforts in algorithmic systems in order to enable everyday users to make more informed decisions in interactions with these systems.

Algorithms in online platforms interact with users' identities in different ways. However, little is known about how users understand the interplay between identity and algorithmic processes on these platforms, and if and how such understandings shape their behavior on these platforms in return. Through semi-structured interviews with 15 US-based TikTok users, we detail users' algorithmic folk theories of the For You Page algorithm in relation to two inter-connected identity types: person and social identity. Participants identified potential harms that can accompany algorithms' tailoring content to their person identities. Further, they believed the algorithm actively suppresses content related to marginalized social identities based on race and ethnicity, body size and physical appearance, ability status, class status, LGBTQ identity, and political and social justice group affiliation. We propose a new algorithmic folk theory of social feeds-The Identity Strainer Theory-to describe when users believe an algorithm filters out and suppresses certain social identities. In developing this theory, we introduce the concept of algorithmic privilege as held by users positioned to benefit from algorithms on the basis of their identities. We further propose the concept of algorithmic representational harm to refer to the harm users experience when they lack algorithmic privilege and are subjected to algorithmic symbolic annihilation. Additionally, we describe how participants changed their behaviors to shape their algorithmic identities to align with how they understood themselves, as well as to resist the suppression of marginalized social identities and lack of algorithmic privilege via individual actions, collective actions, and altering their performances. We theorize our findings to detail the ways the platform's algorithm and its users co-produce knowledge of identity on the platform. We argue the relationship between users' algorithmic folk theories and identity are consequential for social media platforms, as it impacts users' experiences, behaviors, sense of belonging, and perceived ability to be seen, heard, and feel valued by others as mediated through algorithmic systems.

A growing body of literature has proposed formal approaches to audit algorithmic systems for biased and harmful behaviors. While formal auditing approaches have been greatly impactful, they often suffer major blindspots, with critical issues surfacing only in the context of everyday use once systems are deployed. Recent years have seen many cases in which everyday users of algorithmic systems detect and raise awareness about harmful behaviors that they encounter in the course of their everyday interactions with these systems. However, to date little academic attention has been granted to these bottom-up, user-driven auditing processes. In this paper, we propose and explore the concept of everyday algorithm auditing, a process in which users detect, understand, and interrogate problematic machine behaviors via their day-to-day interactions with algorithmic systems. We argue that everyday users are powerful in surfacing problematic machine behaviors that may elude detection via more centrally-organized forms of auditing, regardless of users' knowledge about the underlying algorithms. We analyze several real-world cases of everyday algorithm auditing, drawing lessons from these cases for the design of future platforms and tools that facilitate such auditing behaviors. Finally, we discuss work that lies ahead, toward bridging the gaps between formal auditing approaches and the organic auditing behaviors that emerge in everyday use of algorithmic systems.

Computational techniques are becoming more common in persona development. However, users of personas may question the information in persona profiles because they are unsure of how it was created. This problem is especially vexing for data-driven personas because their creation is an opaque algorithmic process. In this research, we analyze the effect of increased transparency – i.e., explanations of how the information in data-driven personas was produced – on user perceptions. We find that higher transparency through these explanations increases the perceived completeness and clarity of the personas. Contrary to our hypothesis, the perceived credibility of the personas decreases with the increased transparency, possibly due to the technical complexity of the persona profiles disrupting the facade of the personas being real people. This finding suggests that explaining the algorithmic process of data-driven persona creation involves a “transparency trade-off”. We also find that the gender of the persona affects the perceptions, with transparency increasing perceived completeness and empathy of the female persona, but not for the male persona. Therefore, transparency may specifically assist in the acceptance of female personas. We provide practical implication for persona creators regarding transparency in persona profiles.

Algorithms exert great power in curating online information, yet are often opaque in their operation, and even existence. Since opaque algorithms sometimes make biased or deceptive decisions, many have called for increased transparency. However, little is known about how users perceive and interact with potentially biased and deceptive opaque algorithms. What factors are associated with these perceptions, and how does adding transparency into algorithmic systems change user attitudes? To address these questions, we conducted two studies: 1) an analysis of 242 users' online discussions about the Yelp review filtering algorithm and 2) an interview study with 15 Yelp users disclosing the algorithm's existence via a tool. We found that users question or defend this algorithm and its opacity depending on their engagement with and personal gain from the algorithm. We also found adding transparency into the algorithm changed users' attitudes towards the algorithm: users reported their intention to either write for the algorithm in future reviews or leave the platform.

Users frequently use search systems on the Web as well as online social media to learn about ongoing events and public opinion on personalities. Prior studies have shown that the top-ranked results returned by these search engines can shape user opinion about the topic (e.g., event or person) being searched. In case of polarizing topics like politics, where multiple competing perspectives exist, the political bias in the top search results can play a significant role in shaping public opinion towards (or away from) certain perspectives. Given the considerable impact that search bias can have on the user, we propose a generalizable search bias quantification framework that not only measures the political bias in ranked list output by the search system but also decouples the bias introduced by the different sources—input data and ranking system. We apply our framework to study the political bias in searches related to 2016 US Presidential primaries in Twitter social media search and find that both input data and ranking system matter in determining the final search output bias seen by the users. And finally, we use the framework to compare the relative bias for two popular search systems—Twitter social media search and Google web search—for queries related to politicians and political events. We end by discussing some potential solutions to signal the bias in the search results to make the users more aware of them.

Advertisers develop algorithms to select the most relevant advertisements for users. However, the opacity of these algorithms, along with their potential for violating user privacy, has decreased user trust and preference in behavioral advertising. To mitigate this, advertisers have started to communicate algorithmic processes in behavioral advertising. However, how revealing parts of the algorithmic process affects users' perceptions towards ads and platforms is still an open question. To investigate this, we exposed 32 users to why an ad is shown to them, what advertising algorithms infer about them, and how advertisers use this information. Users preferred interpretable, non-creepy explanations about why an ad is presented, along with a recognizable link to their identity. We further found that exposing users to their algorithmically-derived attributes led to algorithm disillusionment---users found that advertising algorithms they thought were perfect were far from it. We propose design implications to effectively communicate information about advertising algorithms.

Algorithmic prioritization is a growing focus for social media users. Control settings are one way for users to adjust the prioritization of their news feeds, but they prioritize feed content in a way that can be difficult to judge objectively. In this work, we study how users engage with difficult-to-validate controls. Via two paired studies using an experimental system -- one interview and one online study -- we found that control settings functioned as placebos. Viewers felt more satisfied with their feed when controls were present, whether they worked or not. We also examine how people engage in sensemaking around control settings, finding that users often take responsibility for violated expectations -- for both real and randomly functioning controls. Finally, we studied how users controlled their social media feeds in the wild. The use of existing social media controls had little impact on user's satisfaction with the feed; instead, users often turned to improvised solutions, like scrolling quickly, to see what they want.

Search systems in online social media sites are frequently used to find information about ongoing events and people. For topics with multiple competing perspectives, such as political events or political candidates, bias in the top ranked results significantly shapes public opinion. However, bias does not emerge from an algorithm alone. It is important to distinguish between the bias that arises from the data that serves as the input to the ranking system and the bias that arises from the ranking system itself. In this paper, we propose a framework to quantify these distinct biases and apply this framework to politics-related queries on Twitter. We found that both the input data and the ranking system contribute significantly to produce varying amounts of bias in the search results and in different ways. We discuss the consequences of these biases and possible mechanisms to signal this bias in social media search systems' interfaces.

Many online platforms use curation algorithms that are opaque to the user. Recent work suggests that discovering a filtering algorithm's existence in a curated feed influences user experience, but it remains unclear how users reason about the operation of these algorithms. In this qualitative laboratory study, researchers interviewed a diverse, non-probability sample of 40 Facebook users before, during, and after being presented alternative displays of Facebook's News Feed curation algorithm's output. Interviews revealed 10 "folk theories' of automated curation, some quite unexpected. Users who were given a probe into the algorithm's operation via an interface that incorporated "seams,' visible hints disclosing aspects of automation operations, could quickly develop theories. Users made plans that depended on their theories. We conclude that foregrounding these automated processes may increase interface design complexity, but it may also add usability benefits.

Our daily digital life is full of algorithmically selected content such as social media feeds, recommendations and personalized search results. These algorithms have great power to shape users' experiences, yet users are often unaware of their presence. Whether it is useful to give users insight into these algorithms' existence or functionality and how such insight might affect their experience are open questions. To address them, we conducted a user study with 40 Facebook users to examine their perceptions of the Facebook News Feed curation algorithm. Surprisingly, more than half of the participants (62.5%) were not aware of the News Feed curation algorithm's existence at all. Initial reactions for these previously unaware participants were surprise and anger. We developed a system, FeedVis, to reveal the difference between the algorithmically curated and an unadulterated News Feed to users, and used it to study how users perceive this difference. Participants were most upset when close friends and family were not shown in their feeds. We also found participants often attributed missing stories to their friends' decisions to exclude them rather than to Facebook News Feed algorithm. By the end of the study, however, participants were mostly satisfied with the content on their feeds. Following up with participants two to six months after the study, we found that for most, satisfaction levels remained similar before and after becoming aware of the algorithm's presence, however, algorithmic awareness led to more active engagement with Facebook and bolstered overall feelings of control on the site.