Here are a list of our on-going projects and some representative publications related to those projects. For a full list of publications, please refer to the publications page.
Technology and Health / Psychological well-being
There are numerous technologies that can support healthy living, ranging from emotional support via social media to chronic disease management. Our lab is currently working on a number of different health technology projects in collaboration with researchers at Rutgers, University of Maryland, and Microsoft research among others. Current projects include: 1) Utilizing social media to improve mental health through social support, 2) Using web tools to break sedentary behavior, 3) Identifying opportunities of telehealth for women’s health, 4) Using games for stroke rehabilitation.
- Ahmadi, M., Schneider, M., Kadam, R., & Wohn, D. Y. (2016). Designing Paralinguistic Digital Affordances for Social Support. [PDF] Proceedings CSCW 2016 Companion, 221-224.
- Wohn, D. Y., & LaRose, R. (2014). Effects of loneliness and differential usage of Facebook on college adjustment of first-year students [pdf] Computers & Education, 76, 158-167
- Wohn, D. Y. (2015). Soft sustainability: How do self-determined motivation and habit contribute to sustainable health technology usage? Workshop on “Moving beyond e-Health and the quantified self”. CSCW 15. Vancouver, Canada
News Consumption in the Age of Social Media
Crystallization is a network model of information flow and reality formation. This model incorporates network theory into the traditional agenda-setting theory and proposes that members of one’s social networks become “neo agenda setters.” We are also doing empirical work on how people consume news through mobile social media and how it influences their political engagement.
- Wohn, D. Y., & Bowe, B. J. (2016). Micro Agenda Setters: The Effect of Social Media on Young Adults’ Exposure to and Attitude Toward News. Social Media and Society, 2(1)
- Wohn, D. Y., & Bowe, B. J. (2014). How social media facilitates social construction of reality. In Proceedings of companion publication of CSCW 2014, 261-264. New York, NY: ACM
- Wohn, D. Y., & Bowe, B. J. (2011). Crystallization theory: Construction of reality in the age of social media. Presented at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Conference. St. Louis, MO
Games, livestreaming, and eSports
Livestreaming and esports are relatively new cultural trends that are recreational activities that require high technology specifications. Current projects are aimed at understanding more about people’s behaviors in these environments with the aim of developing better systems, such as 1) Understanding virtual currency/ economies, 2) Relationships between streamers and viewers, 3) Decision-making and cultural practices in gaming.
- Wohn, D. Y. (2016). From faux-social to pro-social: The mediating role of copresence in developing expectations of social support in a game. PRESENCE: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 25 (1), 61-74
- Freeman, G.,& Wohn, D. Y. (2017). eSports as An Emerging Research Context at CHI: Diverse Perspectives on Definitions [PDF] CHI 2017 Late-breaking work, 1601-1608
- Wohn, D. Y. (2014). Spending real money: Purchasing patterns of virtual goods in an online social game [pdf] Proceedings of CHI 2014, pp. 3359-3368. New York, NY: ACM.
- Wohn, D. Y., & Wash, R. (2013). A virtual “room” with a cue: Detecting personality through spatial customization in a city simulation game. Computers in Human Behavior, 29, 155-159.
- Wohn, D. Y., & Lee, Y-H. (2013). Players of Facebook games and how they play [pdf]Entertainment Computing, 4(3), 171-178
Robots and Bots
We are examining the role that physical robots and virtual bots play in communication via technology.
