Projects

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.

Content Moderation in Social Media

Supported by the National Science Foundation and Mozilla Foundation, our work focuses on the work of volunteer moderators in live streaming communities and understanding how safe spaces develop online.

• Cai, J., Wohn, D. Y., & Almoqbel, M. (2021). Moderation visibility: Mapping the strategies of volunteer moderation in live streaming micro communities. In Proceedings of ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences (IMX), 61-72. [pdf]
• Cook, C. L., Patel, A., Wohn, D. Y. (2021). Commercial versus volunteer: Comparing user perceptions of toxicity and transparency in content moderation across social media platforms. Frontiers in Human Dynamics, 3 [pdf]
• Cai, J., & Wohn, D. Y. (2019). Categorizing live streaming moderation tools: An analysis of Twitch. International Journal of Interactive Communication Systems and Technologies, 9, 36-50 [pdf]
• Cai, J., & Wohn, D. Y. (2019). What are Effective Strategies of Handling Harassment on Twitch? Proceedings of CSCW Companion [pdf]
• Wohn, D. Y. (2019). Volunteer Moderators in Twitch Micro Communities: How they Get Involved, the Roles they Play, and the Emotional Labor they Experience. In Proceedings of 2019 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’19) [pdf]

Digital Patronage

Digital patronage, a term coined by Dr. Wohn, refers to how fans/supporters support content creators both financially and emotionally through new social media platforms.

We are also conducting a study to better understand how BTS ARMY, one of the biggest international fandoms, uses social media to engage with other members of ARMY and BTS themselves. 

• Bonifacio, R., Hair, L., & Wohn, D. Y. (2021). Beyond Fans: The Relational Labor and Communication Practices of Creators on Patreon. New Media and Society [pdf]
  
• Bonifacio, R., & Wohn, D. Y. (2020). Digital Patronage Platforms. In Companion Publication of the 2020 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 221-226 [pdf]
• Wohn, D. Y., Freeman, G., & McLaughlin, C. (2018). Explaining Viewers’ Emotional, Instrumental, and Financial Support Provision for Live Streamers. In Proceedings of CHI, no. 474, New York, NY: ACM [PDF]

Virtual worlds, games, live streaming, and eSports

Live streaming 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, digital patronage 2) Relationships between streamers and viewers, and 3) virtual collaboration/teamwork.

• Uttarapong, J., Cai, J., & Wohn, D. Y. (2021). Harassment Experiences of Women and LGBTQ Live Streamers and How They Handled Negativity. In Proceedings of ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences (IMX), 7-19 [pdf]
• Cai, J., Wohn, D. Y., Mittal, A., & Sureshbabu, D. (2018). Utilitarian and Hedonic Motivations for Live Streaming Shopping. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Interactive Experiences for Television and Online Video (TVX), pp.81-88. New York, NY: ACM [PDF]
• Mittal, A., & Wohn, D. Y. (2019). Charity Streaming: Why Charity Organizations Use Live Streams for Fundraising. Proceedings of ACM CHIPLAY Extended abstracts, 551-556. [pdf]
• Wohn, D. Y., & Freeman, G. (2019). Live Streaming, Playing, and Money Spending Behaviors in eSports. Games and Culture

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.

• Almoqbel, M., Wohn, D.Y., Hayes, R.A., Cha, M. (2019). Understanding Facebook news posts comment reading and reacting behavior through political extremism and cultural orientation. Computers in Human Behavior, 100, 118-126. [pre-print]
• Min, S. J., & Wohn, D. Y. (2018). All the News that You Don’t Like: Cross-cutting Exposure and Political Participation in the Age of Social Media. Computers in Human Behavior, 83, 24-31 [PDF]
• 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