CMSC691/CMSC491: Spring 2024
Description: This course is geared toward developing a broad understanding of the characteristics of today’s online social and crowd systems, including the opportunities and challenges that engender this emergent area. We will focus on the study of different social processes, behavior, and context on today's online social platforms, and learn how to make sense of the vast repositories of data that are generated on these platforms everyday. We will also learn about the design principles behind these systems and the key issues that arise from the widespread adoption of social computing systems in the wild. The course will assign weekly readings on a variety of topics (see topics and schedule table), and students will be required to participate in a group term project. There will be a midterm exam (20%) and two assignments which will involve mini individual projects. Students will also be required to write a critical review on one assigned paper every week. The term project will be 4-person group projects. Each student will need to clearly articulate their concrete contribution in the group project. Topic of the project can be picked by the student groups after discussion with the instructor; the instructor will also provide a set of sample project ideas in class materials. If the project requires data analysis, a contribution of the project could be collecting that data, or the students could also use any of the publicly available social datasets available online. Each project will require both original work as well as a small number of compulsory analyses that cover key concepts from the course.
Prerequisites: In terms of prerequisite skills, students need to have basic knowledge of statistics, preliminary machine learning, and a willingness to do interdisciplinary research.. An overview of the concepts and tools needed will be reviewed across the semester, however in-depth coverage of the fundamentals is not in the scope of this course. This is NOT a machine learning or data mining course. Students also need to be proficient in programming, in an object-oriented/scripting language (e.g., Python, Perl, Java, C#). Experience in use of a scientific computing software like R and Matlab is a bonus, but not required. Students should be prepared to apply what they have learned in prior computer science courses to this emerging new field. You are expected to quickly learn many new things. For example, your project may require you to fetch Twitter data using the Twitter API or analyze posts from Reddit using pre-existing libraries (like python nltk), which should not be too challenging if you already know high-level languages like Python. Please make sure you are comfortable with this.
Course Objectives: The objectives of this course are:
(This schedule may change due to unforeseen events and students' evolving interests)
Date
Topic
Presenter
Topic 0: Introduction to Social and Crowd Computing
01-29-2024
Lecture 0.1: Overview of the course and logistics
Sanorita
Topic 1: Social Ties and Social Capital
01/31/2024
Reading List 1. The Strength of Weak Ties 2. Signed Networks in Social Media 3. Predicting Tie Strength in a New Medium 4. Computer Networks as Social Networks 5. The Benefits of Facebook "Friends:" Social Capital and College Students' Use of Online Social Network Sites 6. Predicting Tie Strength With Social Media
Topic 2: Design
02/05/2024
Reading List 1. Social Translucence: An Approach to Designing Systems that Support Social Processes 2. Privacy, Patriarchy, and Participation on Social Media 3. Defining the web: The politics of search engines 4. A User-Centered Design Investigation for Conversational Agents for Information Retrieval in Educational Scenarios 5. Accessible Design is Mediated by Job Support Structures and Knowledge Gained Through Design Career Pathways 6. Bias-Aware Design for Informed Decisions: Raising Awareness of Self-Selection Bias in User Ratings and Reviews 7. The Chat Circles Series: Explorations in Designing Abstract Graphical Comm. Interfaces 8. Design isWorth a ThousandWords: The Efect of Digital Interaction Design on Picture-Prompted Reminiscence 9. Designing Fair AI in Human Resource Management: Understanding Tensions Surrounding Algorithmic Evaluation and Envisioning Stakeholder-Centered Solutions
Topic 3: Identity, Anonymity, and Deception
02/07/2024
Reading List 1. Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community 2. Is It Really About Me?: Message Content in Social Awareness Streams 3. 4chan and/b: An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community 4. Our buggy moral code. Ted Talk 2009 by Dan Ariely 5. Effects of four computer-mediated communications channels on trust development 6. “Acting Out” Queer Identity: The Embodied Visibility in Social Virtual Reality 7. Social Media's Role During Identity Changes Related to Major Life Events 8. Is Your Toxicity My Toxicity? Exploring the Impact of Rater Identity on Toxicity Annotation 9. Behold the once and future me: Online identity after the end of a romantic relationship
Topic 4: Invisible Algorithm & Algorithmic Audit
02/12/2024
Reading Reflection “I always assumed that I wasn’t really that close to [her]”: Reasoning about invisible algorithms in the news feed
Class Presentation 1. A Human-Centered Review of Algorithms for Decision-Making in Higher Education 2. How Child Welfare Workers Reduce Racial Disparities in Algorithmic Decisions
Reading List 1. Auditing Algorithms: Research Methods for Detecting Discrimination on Internet Platforms 2. Measuring Personalization of Web Search 3. Measuring Price Discrimination and Steering on E-commerce Web Sites 4. Peeking Beneath the Hood of Uber 5. Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook
(1) Sravya Chirakala
(2)
Topic 5: Misinformation and Conspiracy
02/14/2024
Class Presentation 1. “The Government Spies Using Our Webcams:” The Language of Conspiracy Theories in Online Discussions 2. Bias-Aware Systems: Exploring Indicators for the Occurrences of Cognitive Biases when Facing Different Opinions
Reading List 1. Conspiracies Online: User discussions in a Conspiracy Community Following Dramatic Events 2. Still out there: Modeling and Identifying Russian Troll Accounts on Twitter 3. Fake News in the News: An Analysis of Partisan Coverage of the Fake News Phenomenon 4. Characterizing information diets of social media users
(1) Ninad Negi
(2) Zavier Howard
Topic 6: Selective Exposure
02/19/2024
Reading Reflection Who Does Not Benefit from Fact-checking Websites? A Psychological Characteristic Predicts the Selective Avoidance of Clicking Uncongenial Facts
Class Presentation 1. Echo Chambers Online?: Politically Motivated Selective Exposure among Internet News Users 2. Cognitive Dissonance or Credibility? A Comparison of Two Theoretical Explanations for Selective Exposure to Partisan News
Reading List 1. Beware online "filter bubbles". Ted Talk 2011 by Eli Pariser 2. Me, My Echo Chamber, and I: Introspection on Social Media Polarization
(1) Joel Yates (2)
Topic 7: Polarization
02/21/2024
Class Presentation 1. Effects of Socially Stigmatized Crowdfunding Campaigns in Shaping Opinions 2. Polarization, Partisanship and Junk News Consumption over Social Media in the US
Reading List 1. The Hostile Audience: The Effect of Access to Broadband Internet on Partisan Affect 2. Me, My Echo Chamber, and I: Introspection on Social Media Polarization
(1)
(2) Krishna Vamsi Kurumaddali
Homework 1 Release
02/26/2024
Term Project Proposal Presentation
Topic 8: Wisdom of Crowd
02/28/2024
Class Presenta tion 1. Shepherding the crowd yields better work 2. Being a Solo Endeavor or Team Worker in Crowdsourcing Contests? It is a Long-term Decision You Need to Make
Reading List 1. Structuring, aggregating, and evaluating crowdsourced design critique 2. Platemate: crowdsourcing nutritional analysis from food photographs 3. Eliciting Confidence for Improving Crowdsourced Audio Annotations
(1) Shravika Tirumala
(2) Ajmal Kiggundu
Topic 9: Crowd Computing
03/04/2024
Reading Reflection VizWiz: Nearly Real-time Answers to Visual Questions
Class Presentation 1. Soylent: a word processor with a crowd inside 2. Expert crowdsourcing with flash teams
Reading List 1. The future of crowd work
(1) Aditi Joshi
(2) Aravind Pavuluri
Homework 1 Due
Topic 10: Crowdfunding
03/06/2024
Class Presentation 1. Re-imagining the Power of Priming and Framing Effects in the Context of Political Crowdfunding Campaigns 2. The power of collective endorsements: credibility factors in medical crowdfunding campaigns
Reading List 1. Crowdfunding Science: Sharing Research with an Extended Audience 2. Social Ties in Organizational Crowdfunding: Benefits of Team-Authored Proposals 3. Recommending investors for crowdfunding projects 4. Understanding Trust amid Delays in Crowdfunding 5. Designing a Medical Crowdfunding Website from Sense of Community Theory
(1) Ravi Varma Gottumukkala
(2) Dinesh Gadu
03/11/2024
Midterm Exam
Topic 11: Challenges of Social Computing: Privacy
03/13/2024
Class Presentation 1. A US-UK Usability Evaluation of Consent Management Platform Cookie Consent Interface Design on Desktop and Mobile 2. “We Are the Product”: Public Reactions to Online Data Sharing and Privacy Controversies in the Media
Reading List 1. Data, privacy, and the greater good
(1) Neeharika Sinde
(2) Varshitha Palakurthi
03/18/2024
Spring Break
03/20/2024
Spring Break
Topic 12: Health and Social Media
03/25/2024
Reading Reflection Understanding Anti-Vaccination Attitudes in Social Media
Class Presentation 1. Are Embodied Avatars Harmful to our Self-Experience? The Impact of Virtual Embodiment on Body Awareness 2. The Language of LGBTQ+ Minority Stress Experiences on Social Media
Reading List 1. A Social Media Study on Mental Health Status Transitions Surrounding Psychiatric Hospitalizations 2. Designing a Clinician-facing Tool for Utilizing Insights from Patients' Social Media Activity: An Iterative Co-Design Approach 3. Discovering Alternative Treatments for Opioid Use Recovery Using Social Media
(1) Sree Sai Bindu Devalam
(2) Pravallika Vedere
Homework 2 Release
Topic 13: Social Computing and Societal Bias
03/27/2024
Class Presentation 1. Can Voice Assistants Be Microaggressors? Cross-Race Psychological Responses to Failures of Automatic Speech Recognition 2. Is this AI trained on Credible Data? The Effects of Labeling Quality and Performance Bias on User Trust
Reading List 1. Behind Twitter’s Biased AI Cropping and How to Fix It 2. Bias in computer systems
(1) Siddhesh Bhande
(2) Connor Gilger
Topic 14: Crowdfunding: What makes people donate
04/01/2024
Reading Reflection The language that gets people to give: Phrases that predict success on kickstarter
Class Presentation 1. The Art and Science of Persuasion: Not All Crowdfunding Campaign Videos are The Same 2. It Is All About Criticism: Understanding the Effect of Social Media Discourse on Legal Crowdfunding Campaigns
Reading List 1. The dynamics of crowdfunding: An exploratory study
(1) Srichand Medagani
(2) Kiran Reddy
04/03/2024
Mid-term Project Report Presentation
Topic 15: Benefit and Applications of Social Computing: Politics
04/08/2024
Reading Reflection Predicting Elections with Twitter: What 140 Characters Reveal about Political Sentiment
Class Presentation 1. Felt Ethics: Cultivating Ethical Sensibility in Design Practice 2. What is Twitter, a Social Network or a News Media?
Reading List 1. The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Election: Divided They Blog
(1) Ashwik Kilari
(2) Mohammed Ashiq Hyderali
Topic 16: Benefits/Applications of Social Computing Systems: Predictions and Forecasting
04/10/2024
Class Presentation 1. Conceptualizing Algorithmic Stigmatization 2. Facebook language predicts depression in medical records
Reading List 1. Predicting Stock Market Indicators Through Twitter “I hope it is not as bad as I fear” 2. The Language of LGBTQ+ Minority Stress Experiences onSocial Media 3. Prediction and explanation in social systems
(1) Himakar Paradi
(2) Vineeth Nunna
Topic 17: The Impact of Large Language Models and Chatbots
04/15/2024
Reading Reflection Understanding the Benefits and Challenges of Deploying Conversational AI Leveraging Large Language Models for Public Health Intervention
Class Presentation 1. Why Johnny Can’t Prompt: How Non-AI Experts Try (and Fail) to Design LLM Prompts 2. Exploring Effects of Chatbot-based Social Contact on Reducing Mental Illness Stigma
(1) Harisahan Nookala Venkata
(2) Manogna Lakkadasu
Topic 18: Challenges of Social Computing: Ethics of Algorithms
04/17/2024
Class Presentation 1. Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks 2. Attached to "The Algorithm": Making Sense of Algorithmic Precarity on Instagram
(1) Rishabh Saxena
(2) Aloysius Ambe
Homework 2 Due
Topic 19: Understanding Online Communities
04/22/2024
Reading Reflection Loyalty in online communities
Class Presentation 1. Community Identity and User Engagement in a Multi-Community Landscape 2. Accounting for Privacy Pluralism: Lessons and Strategies from Community-Based Privacy Groups
(1) Samritha Balam
(2) Siddhant Gupta
Topic 20: TikTok
04/24/2024
Class Presentation 1. Chasing Play on TikTok from Populations with Disabilities to Inspire Playful and Inclusive Technology Design 2. Algorithmic Folk Theories and Identity: How TikTok Users Co-Produce Knowledge of Identity and Engage in Algorithmic Resistance
Reading List 1. TikTok as a data gathering space: the case of grandchildren and grandparents during the COVID-19 pandemic Marije 2. Constructing Authenticity on TikTok: Social Norms and Social Support on the “Fun” Platform
(1)
(2) Deepthi Kondaveeti
Topic 21: Defining antisocial, Common Approaches of Moderation
04/29/2024
Reading Reflection Online Harassment and Content Moderation: The Case of Blocklists
Class Presentation 1. Automated Hate Speech Detection and the Problem of Offensive Language 2. Decolonizing Content Moderation: Does Uniform Global Community Standard Resemble Utopian Equality or Western Power Hegemony?
Reading List 1. A Survey on Hate Speech Detection using Natural Language Processing 2. Censored, suspended, shadowbanned: User interpretations of content moderation on social media platforms 3. Moderator engagement and community development in the age of algorithms
(1) Sanjida Shehrin (2) Bharadwaj Kuruba Bulley
Topic 22: Chatbot
05/01/2024
Class Presentation 1. Designing and Evaluating a Chatbot for Survivors of Image-Based Sexual Abuse 2. Designing Chatbots with Black Americans with Chronic Conditions: Overcoming Challenges against COVID-19
Reading List 1. “Hey Google, Do Unicorns Exist?”: Conversational Agents as a Path to Answers to Children’s Questions 2. PTSDialogue: Designing a Conversational Agent to Support Individuals with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder 3. Conversational Agents Trust Calibration 4. “L ike Having a R eally bad PA”: The Gulf between User Expectation and Experience of Conversational Agents
(1) Shivanag Maddineni
(2) Bhavanishankar Mahamkali
Topic 23: User and community centric solutions
05/06/2024
Reading Reflection PolicyKit: Building Governance in Online Communities
Class Presentation 1. Squadbox: A Tool to Combat Email Harassment Using Friendsourced Moderation 2. Synthesized Social Signals: Computationally-Derived Social Signals from Account Histories
Reading List 1. CivilServant: Community-Led Experiments in Platform Governance
(1) Rohith Kankipati
(2) Brandon Tenorio
Topic 24: Potpourri
05/08/2024
Class Presentation 1. Better When It Was Smaller? Community Content and Behavior After Massive Growth 2. Friends Don’t Need Receipts: The Curious Case of Social Awareness Streams in the Mobile Payment App Venmo
Reading List 1. Ink: Increasing Worker Agency to Reduce Friction in Hiring Crowd Workers 2. Hive: Collective Design Through Network Rotation 3. Raw: Finstas as Intimate Reconfigurations of Social Media
(1) Rishi Kumar Sira
(2) Joe Wilkins
Course Reflection
05/08/2024
Course Reflection and In-Class project Work
(1)
(2)