Many researchers work to design pro-democratic systems and interventions, but they rarely engage with users' ideals for political discussions.We examine these ideals through a purposive sample of Finnish students.We identify rules that people linked to the roles bound up with these ideals 'should' follow and the sorts of qualities aligned with them.Our qualitative analysis pinpointed four qualities of the ideal discussant: being committed, competent, sincere, and accountable.Also, three traits of the audience envisioned for them proved prominent -members of this ideal audience seek out political discussions that feature those fitting the ideal-discussant role, strive to avoid merely strengthening their pre-existing views, and attempt to reward or punish those meshing with or contradicting the ideal, respectively.The discussion concludes with a reflection on conditions in which these qualities may conflict with broader ideals for discussion or with each other and how design could account for such conflicts.

In social Virtual Reality (VR), particularly within VRChat, a significant group of users often referred to as "mutes" refrain from voice communication. This study analyzes 4212 discussion entries, including both original submissions and comments, from the r/VRchat subreddit to explore the experiences and reasons behind this practice. Our findings indicate that muteness is an integral aspect of social VR culture, yet mute users face challenges, including exposure to abusive behaviors and communication barriers in a fast-paced environment. Factors of social VR like harassment, heightened social anxiety from the immersive presence, and the complexities of identity management can discourage voice communication, leading many to adopt "muteness" as a response. This behavior can be seen within the broader context of social disability, challenging normative communication assumptions. We highlight the risks of generalizing marginalized communities and emphasize the need for further research to address and support the unique needs of these groups in social VR spaces.

The emergence of Generative AI features in news applications may radically change news consumption and challenge journalistic practices. To explore the future potentials and risks of this understudied area, we created six design fictions depicting scenarios such as virtual companions delivering news summaries to the user, AI providing context to news topics, and content being transformed into other formats on demand. The fictions, discussed with a multi-disciplinary group of experts, enabled a critical examination of the diverse ethical, societal, and journalistic implications of AI shaping this everyday activity. The discussions raised several concerns, suggesting that such consumer-oriented AI applications can clash with journalistic values and processes. These include fears that neither consumers nor AI could successfully balance engagement, objectivity, and truth, leading to growing detachment from shared understanding. We offer critical insights into the potential long-term effects to guide design efforts in this emerging application area of GenAI.

Human-computer interaction scholars are increasingly touching on topics related to politics or democracy. We examine these through an analysis of all papers with the word “politics” (n = 378) or “democracy” (n = 152) in abstract, title or keywords. There is an increasingly use of these words within human-computer interaction. Researchers invoke these words with diverse levels of analysis in mind: the early research focused on mezzo-level (i.e., small groups), but more recently the work has begun to include macro-level analysis (i.e., society and politics as played in the public sphere), and a transition toward more normative and activist research is taking place. We bring these differences visible, examine how focus shifts may reduce how we engage with politics and democracy explore how human-computer interaction as a field orients itself to politics and democracy.

Like any form of technology, social media services embed values. To examine how societal values may be present in these systems, we focus on exploring political ideology as a value system. We organised four co-design workshops with political representatives from five major parties in Finland to investigate what values they would incorporate into social media services. The participants were divided into one right-leaning group, two left-leaning groups, and one mixed group. This approach allows us to examine the differences in social media services designed by groups with different political ideologies i.e., value systems. We analysed produced artefacts (early-stage paper mockups) to identify different features and affordances for each group and then contrasted the ideological compositions. Our results revealed a clear distinction between groups: the right-leaning group favoured market-based visibility, while left-leaning groups rejected such design principles in favour of open profile work. Additionally, we found tentative differences in design outcomes along the liberal-conservative dimension. These findings underscore the importance of acknowledging existing political value systems in the design of social computing systems. They also highlight the need for further research to map out political ideologies in technology design.

Participatory budgeting is a democratic innovation increasingly supported by digital platforms. Like any technology, participatory budgeting platforms are not value-free or politically neutral; their design, configuration, and deployment display assumptions and configure participant behaviour. To understand what kinds of configurations occur and what kinds of democratic values they hold, we studied 31 digital participatory budgeting cases in Spain, France, and Finland. These cases were all supported by the same technical platform, Decidim , allowing us to focus on the variations in their configurations. We examined the data from these cases and identified 25 different technical configurations and 15 participatory budgeting configurations. The configurations observed in our cases exhibit individual and community-centred assumptions about expected state-society interactions, as well as open vs managerial approaches to participatory budgeting. Based on these findings, we highlight a dilemma for civic technology designers: to what degree should platforms be open to configuration and customisation, and which political values should be enforced by platform design?

Abstract As scholars increasingly undertake large‐scale analysis of visual materials, advanced computational tools show promise for informing that process. One technique in the toolbox is image recognition, made readily accessible via Google Vision AI, Microsoft Azure Computer Vision, and Amazon's Rekognition service. However, concerns about such issues as bias factors and low reliability have led to warnings against research employing it. A systematic study of cross‐service label agreement concretized such issues: using eight datasets, spanning professionally produced and user‐generated images, the work showed that image‐recognition services disagree on the most suitable labels for images. Beyond supporting caveats expressed in prior literature, the report articulates two mitigation strategies, both involving the use of multiple image‐recognition services: Highly explorative research could include all the labels, accepting noisier but less restrictive analysis output. Alternatively, scholars may employ word‐embedding‐based approaches to identify concepts that are similar enough for their purposes, then focus on those labels filtered in.

Digital tools for collocated synchronous communication, like backchannels and question management systems, are increasingly used in events and education to support interaction between performer(s) and audience. Discussions in the communication tool are prone to various unexpected interruptions which violate against the communication tools' original purpose, i.e. violating performers' expected norms. We study such norm violations and related performers' coping approaches in two 15-week-long field experiments in two elementary schools. Our results demonstrate how the collocated synchronous tools form dual-channel communication environment where both physical and digital channel are in use at the same time. We show how norm violations 'spill over' from their onset in one channel to continue in the other. However, we observed performers coping approaches were primarily focused in the physical channel. This resulted in an asymmetry of presence and delayed the performers' ability to act on violations. Our findings show that the channels in dual-channel communication are tightly interwoven and must be considered as an integrated communication space instead of two co-occurring but separate channels. We provide a framework to study norm violations and discuss implications of this framework on the design of these systems.

Scholarship on algorithms has drawn on the analogy between algorithmic systems and bureaucracies to diagnose shortcomings in algorithmic decision-making. We extend the analogy further by drawing on Michel Crozier's theory of bureaucratic organizations to analyze the relationship between algorithmic and human decision-making power. We present algorithms as analogous to impartial bureaucratic rules for controlling action, and argue that discretionary decision-making power in algorithmic systems accumulates at locations where uncertainty about the operation of algorithms persists. This key point of our essay connects with Alkhatib and Bernstein's theory of 'street-level algorithms', and highlights that the role of human discretion in algorithmic systems is to accommodate uncertain situations which inflexible algorithms cannot handle. We conclude by discussing how the analysis and design of algorithmic systems could seek to identify and cultivate important sources of uncertainty, to enable the human discretionary work that enhances systemic resilience in the face of algorithmic errors.

There have been several attempts to support political engagement through novel social media services. While the political nature of any technologies is widely acknowledged in human-computer interaction, such considerations have been less studied when designing for political engagement in social media services. We used speculative design probes to gauge how political elites perceive alternative social media interfaces designed to increase media diversity and decrease political polarisation. We show how elites? reactions to design probes could be rooted into party ideologies. Based on these, we discuss directions how social media services could be designed. Our underlying contribution is wider. We show how studying elites can provide insights about politics embedded into proposed novel social media services for political engagement. Second, we demonstrate what elites? perspective provide fruitful way to expand and rethink concepts that have been used to study ordinary people before. Finally, we discuss potential challenges of replacing economic interests with political interest in social media service design and provide a richer account on the discussion about social media regulation. Therefore, we pave the way to more research to critically study elites within social computing scholarship and highlight the importance of understanding political motivations which can guide the development of social media.

We present a review of 80 papers representing efforts to support participation in democratic decision-making mostly related to local or national governments. The papers were published in leading human--computer interaction (SIGCHI conferences) venues. Most of this literature represents attempts to support assembly-oriented participation, wherein decisions are made through discussion, although referendum-type participation, involving decision-making based on voting, has gained attention too. Primarily, those papers addressing agenda-setting have examined organization-led forms, in which the agenda is controlled by those issuing the call for participation. Accordingly, the authors call for more research into support for representative models and participant-driven agenda-setting. Furthermore, the literature review pinpoints areas wherein further interdisciplinary engagement may be expected to improve research quality: in political science, HCI-informed methods and new ways of using physical input in participation merit more research, while, from the HCI side, cultivating closer relationships with political science concepts such as democratic innovations and calculus of voting could encourage reconsideration of the research foci. These observations speak to the benefits of a new research agenda for human--computer interaction research, involving different forms of participation, most importantly to address lack of engagement under the representative model of participation. Furthermore, in light of these findings, the paper discusses what type of interdisciplinary research is viable in the HCI field today and how political science and HCI scholars could usefully collaborate.

Social Media platforms are increasingly being used for political activities and communication, and research suggests that social media design and use is contributing to the polarization of the public sphere. This study draws on Habermas' ideals concerning deliberative democracy to explore if novel interface designs that diversify information sources through content recommendation, can decrease polarization. Through a design-probe interview approach and insights generated from 19 political and citizen experts in Finland and the United States, we found that our deliberative design can lead to depolarization, while creating additional complexity through which users question content and information. We discuss the need to move beyond naive content recommendation, and user interface level changes, in order to work towards a depolarized public sphere.

Social media platforms have often been described as online spaces supporting political discourse. However, online discussions are often polarized; people tend to commune with those who are ideologically similar to them. The HCI response to this phenomenon has been to purposefully expose people to diverse viewpoints. This common design agenda is supported through analysis of link sharing, yet little attention has been paid to how users discuss these links. Therefore, the common design agenda may not mitigate polarization. We study the emergent discourse in 10 Finnish migration-related Facebook groups and examine how the same links are shared and discussed across anti- and pro-migration camps. Qualitative analysis of the posts and comments revealed that shared media links do not bridge polarized groups with regard to worldviews and opinions. We then demonstrate alternative design opportunities to resolve this issue and begin to develop a new design agenda to mitigate polarization.

Being able to seek help is a crucial part of any learning process. This includes both collaborative models such as asking for help from others as well as independent models such as using course materials and the vast resources provided by the Web. Currently, MOOC research has addressed social help-seeking within the MOOC course, either using MOOC platform tools (forum, chat) or arranging activities using external platforms (Google Hangout, Facebook groups). However, MOOC learning activities take place in a larger social ecology, including friends and teachers, general online communities and alumni communities. Using survey data from a programming MOOC, we show a typology of social learning strategies: non-use of social help-seeking, seeking help from friends and seeking help from alumni and teacher communities. We further show that students using social help-seeking strategies orient themselves more with a surface approach but are also less likely to drop the course. We conclude this work by addressing the various design possibilities identified by this work.

Data musicalization is the process of automatically composing music based on given data as an approach to perceptualizing information artistically. The aim of data musicalization is to evoke subjective experiences in relation to the information rather than merely to convey unemotional information objectively. This article is written as a tutorial for readers interested in data musicalization. We start by providing a systematic characterization of musicalization approaches, based on their inputs, methods, and outputs. We then illustrate data musicalization techniques with examples from several applications: one that perceptualizes physical sleep data as music, several that artistically compose music inspired by the sleep data, one that musicalizes on-line chat conversations to provide a perceptualization of liveliness of a discussion, and one that uses musicalization in a gamelike mobile application that allows its users to produce music. We additionally provide a number of electronic samples of music produced by the different musicalization applications.

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools are used to increase social interaction in collocated settings. Recent research has been primarily constructive (oriented to building of systems) or phenomenon-driven (serving attempts to understand interactions in collocated CMC). The paper contributes a theory-driven approach and examines collocated CMC as a Habermasean "public sphere": a space that supports inclusive, civil, and rational discussion. An in-the-wild experimental study comparing CMC with face-to-face (F2F) communication enabled ascertaining that CMC is more inclusive than F2F communication. Respectfulness levels did not differ but were established differently: via collective construction of a common narrative in F2F and through quick reactions in CMC. Similarly, while rationality figures were on a par, F2F communication allowed participants to justify their claims better. The article discusses how a theory-based approach can strengthen phenomenon-driven research with new conceptual frames and measurement tools, and steer constructive research with a normative framework.

Tools for supporting performer-audience interaction have been gaining increasing interest in HCI community recently. They encompass a wide range of systems from simple polls to live tweeting and backchannel chats. However, a lack of unifying conceptual framework hampers their efficient development and deployment in events. In this paper, we develop a notion of live participation and present a live participation system that aims to capture performer-audience interaction systems' salient design-relevant characteristics. With user studies, we identify central characteristics of live participation (RQ1) and explore the diversity of types of live participation situations (RQ2). The identified concepts-extended performance, integration work, and episodes-provide the groundwork for further design of live participation systems and more engaging audience interactions.

This study investigates chat room data from a massive open online course (MOOC) that has been organized several times since January 2012. What makes the organization unique is that the chat room has always remained the same, allowing past participants to mingle with the new course takers. Participants who have previously attended the course have started to support the novices, voluntarily taking the role of mentors, while at the same time also learning themselves. Two and a half years of chat logs and interviews show that it is possible that a community consisting of previous and current participants emerges naturally. Furthermore, there are plenty of students that unconditionally help others, even when they themselves no longer attend the course. Our observations suggest that communities of practice emerge naturally around the chat rooms of MOOCs.

Backchannels are tools that allow participants to discuss during a performance, such as lecture or presentation, without interrupting it. They are used in higher education and conferences to facilitate audience participation. This study examines backchannels in a Finnish primary school with a class of 12-13-year-old pupils. Backchannels can allow anonymous participation and this feature has been found practical in higher education. In this study, we observed that primary school pupils posted relevant messages at the same level as reported prior studies conducted in higher education. The pupils also appreciated the anonymity as it provided additional safety for self-expression.

Interactive walk-up-and-use displays are spreading in a variety of settings where stand presentation situations are common. We contribute by characterizing a presentation situation and investigating specific design implications for presenters in this situation. We also introduce interface system that utilizes physics-modeled spherical content widgets for information browsing. The system includes dedicated features we developed to support presenters in content production and visualization. To investigate stand presentations and their support, we organized a field trial at an exhibition, collecting observational data from video analysis, interviews with presenters, and questionnaires from the audience and presenters. The field study confirms the importance of the presentation use case for public walk-up-and-use screens and points to dedicated design implications for simultaneous support for presenters and visitors, management of presentation territories, and personalization.

Mobile devices have become an important part of adult life, where they are now used for media consumption and creation instead of traditional telephony function only. The same trend is visible in teens and children, both of whom are using mobile devices increasingly.