Conference Companion Publication of the 2019 on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 2019
Graduate school and academia can often be challenging and hard to navigate. This work explores ho... more Graduate school and academia can often be challenging and hard to navigate. This work explores how people are using Reddit to reach out to others in academic subreddits to talk about issues one might face in their academic journey. We also explore how such discussion differs between subreddits by comparing two popularly used academic subreddits: r/gradschool and r/academia. For each subreddit, we investigated 300 posts and 500 comments. Using topic modelling, we identify and distinguish the main emergent types of posts and comments we find in these two subreddits. We find that posts in r/academia center more on the challenging aspects of academia such as plagiarism, working in academia, and mental health, whereas r/gradschool posts deal with more generic issues on graduate school life. However, we find that the way the community reacts and provides support via comments is similar in both subreddits, mostly by providing moral support and solidarity.
There has been significant amount of research in Stackelberg Security Games (SSG), and a common a... more There has been significant amount of research in Stackelberg Security Games (SSG), and a common assumption in that literature is that the adversary perfectly observes the defender’s mixed strategy. However, in real-world settings the adversary can only observe a sequence of defender pure strategies sampled from the actual mixed strategy. Therefore, a key challenge is the modeling of adversary’s belief formation based on such limited observations. The SSG literature lacks a comparative analysis of these models and a principled study of their strengths and weaknesses. In this paper, we study the following shortcomings of previous work and introduce new models that address these shortcomings. First, we address the lack of empirical evaluation or head-to-head comparison of existing models by conducting the first-of-its-kind systematic comparison of existing and new proposed models on belief data collected from human subjects on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Second, we show that assuming a hom...
Unemployed individuals experience emotional upheaval and financial constraints, and they struggle... more Unemployed individuals experience emotional upheaval and financial constraints, and they struggle to share their challenges and obtain support from their family members and social circles. While prior work has shown that social media platforms enable their users to safely share their turmoil, hardships, and emotional upheavals and seek support, little is known about how the unemployed use such platforms. Based on a mixed-methods analysis of data retrieved from unemployment communities on Reddit, our study reveals that redditors in these communities engage in exchanges that range from queries seeking information about job searching to discussions about sensitive topics such as the health and social implications of unemployment. Also, while redditors use mostly negative emotional tonality in their texts when initiating a new post, the comments in response provide considerable social support in the form of esteem, emotional, informational, network, and instrumental support. Based on th...
Smart devices have become an integral part of the everyday lives of children. Today, children can... more Smart devices have become an integral part of the everyday lives of children. Today, children can even use voice-based interactions to interact with devices for a wide range of activities. Previous research has shown that voice-driven interfaces have a potential to offer a potent new mechanism for teaching, engaging, and supporting children in daily life. Our paper, therefore, argues that it is critical not only to investigate how children use voice-based interactions to communicate with devices (e.g., smart speakers) but also the nature of relationships that children form with these devices, the influence such use has on children’s learning and behavior, and the role that parents or guardians play in deciding the norms of use for children. We also propose to explicitly and intricately investigate complexities in use and its impact relative to entangled identities (conveyed through overlapping attributes of gender, ethnicity, race, class) and larger social systems. To this end, we p...
Companion Publication of the 2021 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
The establishment of one’s professional identity can be essential to one’s sense of worth. For wo... more The establishment of one’s professional identity can be essential to one’s sense of worth. For women, such challenges can be further magnified owing to the need to perform traditional roles along with sustaining a professional career. Through an analysis of a random sample of 10 discussion threads (80 conversation traces) from a subreddit called r/careerwomen, we explore the needs that draw women to use such forums and the ways in which such forums help develop endurance. Our preliminary analysis provides 2 main themes towards understanding how multiple socio-cultural pressures create tensions in defining one’s sense of worth. In contrast, 5 other themes provide insights into strategies to redefine norms of worth. Building on these themes, we propose the analytical frame of morale repair, which aims to discuss how such socio-technical interventions can be designed and structured to further address the struggles for women in establishing a sense of worth.
Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology
Social media, particularly Twitter, is a powerful medium for expression and discussion across reg... more Social media, particularly Twitter, is a powerful medium for expression and discussion across regions and communities in the world today. Using hashtags, a powerful and popular affordance of Twitter, several forms of civic engagement and online social campaigns emerge and inform public discourse. Although several prior studies have investigated the rhetorical impact of such narrative movements on Twitter, an important consideration lies in understanding the structural forms that such narratives take depending on the context and regional culture where the movement originates. To this end, this study embarks on a preliminary analysis of 150 tweets related to calls of action and social justice in the aftermath of the death of a popular Indian movie star. The analysis reveals a diverse spectrum of themes ranging from expressions of loss and grief to critiques of institutions and mechanisms of power. Parallel but powerful themes also demonstrate attempts to nurture and embolden the campaign. The aim of this analysis is to provide insights into how such channels of discourse might be designed to create a medium of freedom of expression and foster safe spaces for civic engagement.
Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Today, Conversational Agents (CA) are deeply integrated into the daily lives of millions of famil... more Today, Conversational Agents (CA) are deeply integrated into the daily lives of millions of families, which has led children to extensively interact with such devices. Studies have suggested that the social nature of CA makes them a good learning companion for children. Therefore, to understand children's preferences for the use of CAs for the purpose of in-home learning, we conducted three participatory design sessions. In order to identify parents' requirements in this regard, we also included them in the third session. We found that children expect such devices to possess a personality and an advanced level of intelligence, and support multiple content domains and learning modes and human-like conversations. Parents desire such devices to include them in their children's learning activities, foster social engagement, and to allow them to monitor their children's use. This understanding will inform the design of future CAs for the purpose of in-home learning.
Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology
Software programming is increasingly becoming a collaborative and community driven effort, with o... more Software programming is increasingly becoming a collaborative and community driven effort, with online discussions becoming vital resources for learning and knowledge sharing. This study explores differences in the discourse patterns in two popular online programming communities to provide preliminary insights for the question of how virtual learning communities should be designed and structured. A content analysis of a random sample of 15 discussion threads from each of r/Askprogramming (236 contributions) and Stack Overflow (SO; 224 contributions) was used to explore the observed interaction patterns. Differences between sites emerge in the scope of topics and the nature of responses the community provides. While Stack Overflow is more task‐specific, r/Askprogramming supports a greater sense of bonding and camaraderie among community members in addition to task‐specific discussions. These findings suggest key normative structures that regulate the nature of discourse in these communities which may in turn have design implications for such online learning initiatives.
Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies
Over the past few years, the technological vision of the HCI and UbiComp communities regarding co... more Over the past few years, the technological vision of the HCI and UbiComp communities regarding conversational devices has become manifest in the form of smart speakers such as Google Home and Amazon Echo. Even though millions of households have adopted and integrated these devices into their daily lives, we lack a deep understanding of how different members of a household use such devices. To this end, we conducted interviews with 18 families and collected their Google Home Activity logs to understand the usage patterns of adults and children. Our findings reveal that there are substantial differences in the ways smart speakers are used by adults and children in families over an extended period of time. We report on how parents influence children's use and how different users perceive the devices. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings and provide guidelines for improving the design of future smart speakers and conversational agents.
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
There is racial diversity as well as economic inequality in the United States (U.S.). To gain a n... more There is racial diversity as well as economic inequality in the United States (U.S.). To gain a nuanced understanding of how households from different socio economic and racial backgrounds integrate technology into their lives, we conducted a diary study with 22 parents who were Asian Indian (the fastest-growing immigrant population in U.S.) and 18 who were White American (the largest racial group in U.S.) parents from the working and middle classes. The participants logged in-situ instances of using smart phones and speaker use by, with, and around children for 8 weeks, and were interviewed once every four weeks (two times in total). Our findings reveal differences and similarities in parents' attitudes and practices of using or not using these devices around and with children, in parental restrictions of children's use of technology, and children's daily use patterns. The paper concludes with a discussions of the implications of our findings and suggestions for future ...
Conference Companion Publication of the 2020 on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
Software programming is increasingly becoming a community-driven effort, with online discussion c... more Software programming is increasingly becoming a community-driven effort, with online discussion channels becoming vital resources for learning and knowledge sharing. This study explores differences in the discourse patterns of two popular online programming communities (Stack Overflow and r/Askprogramming) to provide preliminary insights into the type of learning practices these collectives support and scaffold. A three-step content analysis framework that investigates a sample of 8639 and 6126 contributions from Stack Overflow and r/Askprogramming respectively is presented. Preliminary results indicate that differences emerge in the scope of topics and the nature of responses the communities provide. While Stack Overflow is more task-specific, r/Askprogramming supports a greater sense of bonding and camaraderie among community members in addition to task-specific discussions. These results provide insights into the type of practices these communities support, which can be essential in considering how online communities that support learning activities should be designed.
Conference Companion Publication of the 2019 on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 2019
Graduate school and academia can often be challenging and hard to navigate. This work explores ho... more Graduate school and academia can often be challenging and hard to navigate. This work explores how people are using Reddit to reach out to others in academic subreddits to talk about issues one might face in their academic journey. We also explore how such discussion differs between subreddits by comparing two popularly used academic subreddits: r/gradschool and r/academia. For each subreddit, we investigated 300 posts and 500 comments. Using topic modelling, we identify and distinguish the main emergent types of posts and comments we find in these two subreddits. We find that posts in r/academia center more on the challenging aspects of academia such as plagiarism, working in academia, and mental health, whereas r/gradschool posts deal with more generic issues on graduate school life. However, we find that the way the community reacts and provides support via comments is similar in both subreddits, mostly by providing moral support and solidarity.
There has been significant amount of research in Stackelberg Security Games (SSG), and a common a... more There has been significant amount of research in Stackelberg Security Games (SSG), and a common assumption in that literature is that the adversary perfectly observes the defender’s mixed strategy. However, in real-world settings the adversary can only observe a sequence of defender pure strategies sampled from the actual mixed strategy. Therefore, a key challenge is the modeling of adversary’s belief formation based on such limited observations. The SSG literature lacks a comparative analysis of these models and a principled study of their strengths and weaknesses. In this paper, we study the following shortcomings of previous work and introduce new models that address these shortcomings. First, we address the lack of empirical evaluation or head-to-head comparison of existing models by conducting the first-of-its-kind systematic comparison of existing and new proposed models on belief data collected from human subjects on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Second, we show that assuming a hom...
Unemployed individuals experience emotional upheaval and financial constraints, and they struggle... more Unemployed individuals experience emotional upheaval and financial constraints, and they struggle to share their challenges and obtain support from their family members and social circles. While prior work has shown that social media platforms enable their users to safely share their turmoil, hardships, and emotional upheavals and seek support, little is known about how the unemployed use such platforms. Based on a mixed-methods analysis of data retrieved from unemployment communities on Reddit, our study reveals that redditors in these communities engage in exchanges that range from queries seeking information about job searching to discussions about sensitive topics such as the health and social implications of unemployment. Also, while redditors use mostly negative emotional tonality in their texts when initiating a new post, the comments in response provide considerable social support in the form of esteem, emotional, informational, network, and instrumental support. Based on th...
Smart devices have become an integral part of the everyday lives of children. Today, children can... more Smart devices have become an integral part of the everyday lives of children. Today, children can even use voice-based interactions to interact with devices for a wide range of activities. Previous research has shown that voice-driven interfaces have a potential to offer a potent new mechanism for teaching, engaging, and supporting children in daily life. Our paper, therefore, argues that it is critical not only to investigate how children use voice-based interactions to communicate with devices (e.g., smart speakers) but also the nature of relationships that children form with these devices, the influence such use has on children’s learning and behavior, and the role that parents or guardians play in deciding the norms of use for children. We also propose to explicitly and intricately investigate complexities in use and its impact relative to entangled identities (conveyed through overlapping attributes of gender, ethnicity, race, class) and larger social systems. To this end, we p...
Companion Publication of the 2021 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
The establishment of one’s professional identity can be essential to one’s sense of worth. For wo... more The establishment of one’s professional identity can be essential to one’s sense of worth. For women, such challenges can be further magnified owing to the need to perform traditional roles along with sustaining a professional career. Through an analysis of a random sample of 10 discussion threads (80 conversation traces) from a subreddit called r/careerwomen, we explore the needs that draw women to use such forums and the ways in which such forums help develop endurance. Our preliminary analysis provides 2 main themes towards understanding how multiple socio-cultural pressures create tensions in defining one’s sense of worth. In contrast, 5 other themes provide insights into strategies to redefine norms of worth. Building on these themes, we propose the analytical frame of morale repair, which aims to discuss how such socio-technical interventions can be designed and structured to further address the struggles for women in establishing a sense of worth.
Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology
Social media, particularly Twitter, is a powerful medium for expression and discussion across reg... more Social media, particularly Twitter, is a powerful medium for expression and discussion across regions and communities in the world today. Using hashtags, a powerful and popular affordance of Twitter, several forms of civic engagement and online social campaigns emerge and inform public discourse. Although several prior studies have investigated the rhetorical impact of such narrative movements on Twitter, an important consideration lies in understanding the structural forms that such narratives take depending on the context and regional culture where the movement originates. To this end, this study embarks on a preliminary analysis of 150 tweets related to calls of action and social justice in the aftermath of the death of a popular Indian movie star. The analysis reveals a diverse spectrum of themes ranging from expressions of loss and grief to critiques of institutions and mechanisms of power. Parallel but powerful themes also demonstrate attempts to nurture and embolden the campaign. The aim of this analysis is to provide insights into how such channels of discourse might be designed to create a medium of freedom of expression and foster safe spaces for civic engagement.
Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Today, Conversational Agents (CA) are deeply integrated into the daily lives of millions of famil... more Today, Conversational Agents (CA) are deeply integrated into the daily lives of millions of families, which has led children to extensively interact with such devices. Studies have suggested that the social nature of CA makes them a good learning companion for children. Therefore, to understand children's preferences for the use of CAs for the purpose of in-home learning, we conducted three participatory design sessions. In order to identify parents' requirements in this regard, we also included them in the third session. We found that children expect such devices to possess a personality and an advanced level of intelligence, and support multiple content domains and learning modes and human-like conversations. Parents desire such devices to include them in their children's learning activities, foster social engagement, and to allow them to monitor their children's use. This understanding will inform the design of future CAs for the purpose of in-home learning.
Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology
Software programming is increasingly becoming a collaborative and community driven effort, with o... more Software programming is increasingly becoming a collaborative and community driven effort, with online discussions becoming vital resources for learning and knowledge sharing. This study explores differences in the discourse patterns in two popular online programming communities to provide preliminary insights for the question of how virtual learning communities should be designed and structured. A content analysis of a random sample of 15 discussion threads from each of r/Askprogramming (236 contributions) and Stack Overflow (SO; 224 contributions) was used to explore the observed interaction patterns. Differences between sites emerge in the scope of topics and the nature of responses the community provides. While Stack Overflow is more task‐specific, r/Askprogramming supports a greater sense of bonding and camaraderie among community members in addition to task‐specific discussions. These findings suggest key normative structures that regulate the nature of discourse in these communities which may in turn have design implications for such online learning initiatives.
Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies
Over the past few years, the technological vision of the HCI and UbiComp communities regarding co... more Over the past few years, the technological vision of the HCI and UbiComp communities regarding conversational devices has become manifest in the form of smart speakers such as Google Home and Amazon Echo. Even though millions of households have adopted and integrated these devices into their daily lives, we lack a deep understanding of how different members of a household use such devices. To this end, we conducted interviews with 18 families and collected their Google Home Activity logs to understand the usage patterns of adults and children. Our findings reveal that there are substantial differences in the ways smart speakers are used by adults and children in families over an extended period of time. We report on how parents influence children's use and how different users perceive the devices. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings and provide guidelines for improving the design of future smart speakers and conversational agents.
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
There is racial diversity as well as economic inequality in the United States (U.S.). To gain a n... more There is racial diversity as well as economic inequality in the United States (U.S.). To gain a nuanced understanding of how households from different socio economic and racial backgrounds integrate technology into their lives, we conducted a diary study with 22 parents who were Asian Indian (the fastest-growing immigrant population in U.S.) and 18 who were White American (the largest racial group in U.S.) parents from the working and middle classes. The participants logged in-situ instances of using smart phones and speaker use by, with, and around children for 8 weeks, and were interviewed once every four weeks (two times in total). Our findings reveal differences and similarities in parents' attitudes and practices of using or not using these devices around and with children, in parental restrictions of children's use of technology, and children's daily use patterns. The paper concludes with a discussions of the implications of our findings and suggestions for future ...
Conference Companion Publication of the 2020 on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
Software programming is increasingly becoming a community-driven effort, with online discussion c... more Software programming is increasingly becoming a community-driven effort, with online discussion channels becoming vital resources for learning and knowledge sharing. This study explores differences in the discourse patterns of two popular online programming communities (Stack Overflow and r/Askprogramming) to provide preliminary insights into the type of learning practices these collectives support and scaffold. A three-step content analysis framework that investigates a sample of 8639 and 6126 contributions from Stack Overflow and r/Askprogramming respectively is presented. Preliminary results indicate that differences emerge in the scope of topics and the nature of responses the communities provide. While Stack Overflow is more task-specific, r/Askprogramming supports a greater sense of bonding and camaraderie among community members in addition to task-specific discussions. These results provide insights into the type of practices these communities support, which can be essential in considering how online communities that support learning activities should be designed.
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Papers by Subhasree Sengupta