Information disorder (i.e. the proliferation of misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, and hate speech) is contributing to intensifying global democratic backsliding, and diminished abilities to understand and address difficult challenges across diverse domains, such as health, migration, and climate science. A contributing factor to information disorder is the internet’s participatory, collaborative, and remix culture, with platforms creating pathways for online audiences to create and spread problematic information. Researchers studying information disorder have become targets of disinformation and harassment campaigns, increasing burnout and underscoring the pressing need and ongoing challenges of conducting this research. These challenges stress the importance of scholars from diverse backgrounds coming together to build networks that increase both the quality of scholarship and capacities to protect and care for targeted researchers. In this CSCW workshop, attendees will identify which directions of empirical research, methods, perspectives, interventions, public communications, and other actions should be prioritized as the community seeks to continue combating information disorder in this difficult climate. Scholars will then share and reflect upon concerns and harms they have endured in pursuing this work, sharing resources that have helped them through these challenges, identifying new potential resources, and opportunities to support one another.
There will be two offerings of this workshop: One online and one in person. This offering modality is in interest of providing a space for people working on these issues to network and find community, despite travel uncertainties.
The online session is TBD on scheduling and more details. It will likely be a slightly shorter schedule than below, but very similar.
| Time | Activity and Description |
|---|---|
| 10am – 11:30am |
Welcome and Introductions
Facilitators will review the agenda for the day and norms for the session. Attendees will introduce themselves and present their lightning talks of their provocation for the workshop.
|
| 11:30am – 12pm |
Establishing Direction and Structure
Facilitators will explain the upcoming activities and attendees will engage in initial ideation to develop topics and themes for each of the two interactive activities via post-it notes on established boards.
|
| 12pm – 1:15pm |
Lunch
Lunch will be ordered in or eaten near the venue, giving social time for attendees.
|
| 1:15pm – 2:15pm |
Activity 1: Identifying Priorities
In this activity, attendees will work in small groups to identify key priorities in previously established categories alongside additional recommendations for what the field should focus on moving forward. Each group will share one priority and one new category to consider for this prioritization.
|
| 2:15pm – 2:30pm |
BREAK
|
| 2:30pm – 3:00pm |
Activity 1 Part 2: Whole Group Priorities
After the break, the entire group will discuss priorities, voting collectively to uplift a priority from each category and a new category to consider.
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| 3:00pm – 4:00pm |
Activity 2: Sustaining and Supporting this Work
As a group, we will focus on and reflect upon the difficulties researchers face and the resources that have helped them persevere – and ideate new or needed resources.
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| 4:00pm – 4:15pm |
BREAK
|
| 4:15pm – 5:00pm |
Activity 3: Where to go from here
We will take this last bit of time together to reflect and highlight specific resources, priorities, and ways to sustainably support one another in achieving these priorities.
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It is important to note that CSCW workshops do require a registration fee, which is something workshop organizers cannot control and do not currently know the amount. It will be posted here when we do know. Note: CSCW does practice location based registration fees to promote equity in conference attendance. We are also figuring out what fees may exist for a virtual offering. Rates from last year are here.
We welcome short submissions (2-6 pages before references and appendices) in the ACM single-column format.
Templates: Word | LaTex | Overleaf
All submissions should include an abstract (up to 300 words), which they can opt-in to having posted on the workshop website before the workshop. We will perform a single-blind review of submissions, evaluating them for relevance, originality, quality, and potential to foster conversation.
Contributions may include position papers, theoretical frameworks, literature reviews, a “prequel” or early findings of empirical work, “coda” work expanding on previously-published work, or other original submissions promoting conversation about information disorder and participatory online culture. Submissions may have multiple authors, but at least one author must attend the workshop and give a brief lightning talk about the work. We welcome various methods and epistemologies in submissions – community-based, quantitative, qualitative, policy, design-based work, and more.
We actively welcome submissions from contributors who are not “traditional academics” but practitioners from industry (i.e. Trust & Safety, technologists, journalists, fact-checkers, etc), governmental, nonprofit, or activist organizations. We also encourage contributions from individuals studying participatory online culture outside of the “problematic information” space – particularly those focused on social movements and activism.
For more information, you may read the accepted CSCW Workshop Proposal for this workshop here.
Our organizing committee represents 11 institutions located in 3 countries on 3 different continents. We are professors, research scientists, and PhD students working in this space and seeking colleagues to convene with. You can read a little about us below.
Please contact Nina and Stephen for any questions about this workshop. Our emails are in the proposal.
PhD student at the University of Washington working with the Center for an Informed Public. Her work focuses on visual media’s role in “problematic information” (mis- and disinformation, scams, online hate, image-based abuse) and how participatory visual culture becomes part of information environments and operations – targeting high-stakes situations and core identities (i.e. elections, migration, religion)
PhD candidate examining how disinformation targeting U.S. elections integrates offline infrastructures into online spaces to disrupt collective sensemaking processes while simultaneously mobilizing audiences to contest unfavorable election results. He highlights how influencers and political elites collaborate with online audiences in continuous storytelling, adapting to current events by providing frames that integrate those events into an ongoing deep story surrounding American identity.
PhD candidate at the University of Michigan School of Information. Her research examines how state actors, particularly Russia, attempt to manipulate online information environments. Her work employs both quantitative and qualitative methods, and has involved data from social media platforms as well as peer-production knowledge sites.
Information Science PhD candidate at Cornell Tech. Marianne’s work spans computational social science, social computing, and communication, and her research examines how AI and emerging technologies impact news and civic information ecosystems.
Research Engineer at the Center for Social Media and Politics at NYU and incoming PhD student to Princeton University. His research examines harmful content in digital and social media with a particular interest in how humor helps hate spread online.
Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington, working with the Center for an Informed Public. His work broadly focuses on the roles of influencers and sudden attention in impacting online information ecosystems and user behaviors, particularly as they relate to online news.
Research Scientist at SINTEF and Research Advisor to the MIT Ukraine program at MIT, where he leads the development of its new research program on countering Influence Operations (IOs). He is interested in developing building blocks for war gaming IOs and associated hybrid threat scenarios as a training tool for improving collaborative defense capacity across heterogeneous stakeholders.
Research Scientist and Associate Professor, excels in big data, complex networks, and digital communication. With SINTEF's Smart Data group, he improves AI with sustainable data processing. His research at Oslo Metropolitan links digital communication to African conflicts.
Assistant professor of computer science at New Mexico State University. They research how organizations and their clients navigate politicized data work. Their work spans studies on information disorder in electoral contexts, activist data practices that amplify lived experiences, as well as perceptions of data, technology, and surveillance in asylum and immigration contexts.
Assistant professor of computer science at Swarthmore College. His research examines ways to help people resist technologically-mediated harm, ranging from strategic misinformation and hate speech to privacy violations; build sociotechnical systems to repair trust in each other and our institutions; and empower people to advocate for their rights while refusing harmful data and labor practices.
Assistant professor at UT Austin's School of Information. His research focuses on understanding the spread of misinformation and designing community-based responses to that spread.
Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Ashoka University. His primary research interest is Computational Social Science, with a focus on analysis of large-scale media data. His research examines policy discourse in national and regional news sources, and characteristics and evolution of misinformation communities on social media.
Professor of Information at the University of Michigan. His work examines how social media is used in political campaigns in India, and the specific role of social media influencers in mainstream politics. His work has covered the use of coordinated social media outreach and misinformation, and the broader intersection of technology and populism in current day India.
Professor at the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington (UW). She is also a co-founder of the UW Center for an Informed Public. Dr. Starbird’s research sits at the intersection of human-computer interaction and crisis informatics. Currently, she focuses on the production and spread of online rumors and disinformation during crises, including disasters and political disruptions.