Currently, there is widespread media coverage about the problems with 'fake news' that appears in social media, but the effects of biased information that appears in search engine results is also increasing. The authors argue that the search engine results page (SERP) exposes three important types of bias: source bias, algorithmic bias, and cognitive bias. To explore the relationship between these three types of bias, we conducted a mixed methods study with sixty participants (plus fourteen in a pilot to make a total of seventy-four participants). Within a library setting, participants were provided with mock search engine pages that presented order-controlled sources on a science controversy. Participants were then asked to rank the sources' usefulness and then summarize the controversy. We found that participants ranked the usefulness of sources depending on its presentation within a SERP. In turn, this also influenced how the participants summarized the topic. We attribute the differences in the participants' writings to the cognitive biases that affect a user's judgment when selecting sources on a SERP. We identify four main cognitive biases that a SERP can evoke in students: Priming, Anchoring, Framing, and the Availability Heuristic. While policing information quality is a quixotic task, changes can be made to both SERPs and a user's decision-making when selecting sources. As bias emerges both on the system side and the user side of search, we suggest a two-fold solution is required to address these challenges.

Through this paper we step away from the proposition that there is one universally accepted notion of sustainability. We introduce the CSCW community to the scholarship of Anthony Weston, a philosopher who offers a way to acknowledge and leverage the plurality of values that inform conceptualizations of environmental sustainability. We use key themes from Weston's philosophy to analyze three social computing applications that employ tropes of sustainability, and explore their potential as sites of critical and disruptive discourse. Our focus is on openly or commercially available digital tools, simulations, and experiences that support the broader public, including children, learning about the environment and sustainability concepts. We posit that Weston's work provides an innovative framework for Sustainable HCI, one that is in alignment with the growing diversity of approaches to design in Sustainable HCI, alternatives to designing for tightly bounded problems and anticipated solutions.

This article presents an analysis of participation patterns in an Alternate Reality Game, World Without Oil. This game aims to bring people together in an online environment to reflect on how an oil crisis might affect their lives and communities as a way to both counter such a crisis and to build collective intelligence about responding to it. We present a series of participation profiles based on a quantitative analysis of 1554 contributions to the game narrative made by 322 players. We further qualitatively analyze a sample of these contributions. We outline the dominant themes, the majority of which engage the global oil crisis for its effects on commute options and present micro-sustainability solutions in response. We further draw on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of this space to discuss how the design of the game, specifically its framing of the problem, feedback mechanism, and absence of subject-matter expertise, counter its aim of generating collective intelligence, making it conducive to groupthink.

This article presents an analysis of participation patterns of an Alternate Reality game World Without Oil. This game aims to bring people together in an online environment to reflect and share insights about oil dependence. We present a series of participation profiles based on a quantitative analysis of 1554 contributions to the game narrative made by 322 players. We build on these profiles to suggest a preliminary outline of design challenges for building effective interactive learning environments that foster meaningful participation.