Donghee Yvette Wohn

New Jersey Institute of Technology | NJIT · Department of Informatics

Generative AI (Gen-AI) is rapidly changing the landscape of User�Generated Content (UGC) on social media. AI tools for generating text, images, and videos, such as Large-Language Models (LLM), image generation AI, AI-powered video material tools, and deep fake technologies, are accelerating creators in obtaining content ideas, drafting outlines, an...

Social media users may perceive moderation decisions by the platform differently, which can lead to frustration and dropout. This study investigates users' perceived justice and fairness of online moderation decisions when they are exposed to various illegal versus legal scenarios, retributive versus restorative moderation strategies, and user-mode...

It is our great pleasure to introduce this issue of the Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, which focuses on contributions from the research community on Supporting Group Work (GROUP). This thriving community is home to researchers within CSCW, HCI for practice-centered computing, sociotechnical studies, and interdisciplinary grou...

Online harassment and content moderation have been well-documented in online communities. However, new contexts and systems always bring new ways of harassment and need new moderation mechanisms. This study focuses on hate raids, a form of group attack in real-time in live streaming communities. Through a qualitative analysis of hate raids discussi...

Online harassment and content moderation have been well-documented in online communities. However, new contexts and systems always bring new ways of harassment and need new moderation mechanisms. This study focuses on hate raids, a form of group attack in real-time in live streaming communities. Through a qualitative analysis of hate raids discussi...

As each micro community centered around the streamer attempts to set its own guidelines in live streaming communities, it is common for volunteer moderators (mods) and the streamer to disagree on how to handle various situations. In this study, we conducted an online survey (N=240) with live streaming mods to explore their commitment to the streame...

Content moderation is a crucial aspect of online platforms, and it requires human moderators (mods) to repeatedly review and remove harmful content. However, this moderation process can lead to cognitive overload and emotional labor for the mods. As new platforms and designs emerge, such as live streaming space, new challenges arise due to the real...

This study examines the active and passive media usage behaviors of ARMY, the fanbase of the Korean pop music group BTS. Active media use includes actions such as posting, commenting, and sharing, while passive media use includes simply consuming content without actively participating. We conducted an online survey (N=262) and used Social Cognitive...

In this research, we assessed how young adults determine the accuracy of news articles and sources through a seven-day diary study. We performed a qualitative analysis on the participants’ responses and found that the participants mainly used nine different strategies to evaluate the accuracy of COVID news. The majority of respondents relied on the...

When people have the freedom to create and post content on the internet, particularly anonymously, they do not always respect the rules and regulations of the websites on which they post, leaving other unsuspecting users vulnerable to sexism, racism, threats, and other unacceptable content in their daily cyberspace diet. However, content moderators...

The advent of various in-game purchasing systems has led to several ethical concerns in contemporary gaming ecosystems, including the monetary dark patterns in game design and the potential harms on gamer welling by introducing cheating, gambling, and addictive mechanisms. These concerns have resulted in the rise of tensions regarding the impacts o...

Social media feeds provide a lot of information that would be of great value to law enforcement. Previous research dedicated considerable attention to sharing large-scale public safety incidents on social media. However, little research focused on minor public safety incidents. According to collective action theory, rational people would not partic...

Digital patronage is an emergent revenue model in which fans provide recurring financial support to a content creator, as exemplified through platforms like Twitch and Patreon. Whereas previous research has investigated creator-supporter relationships, the current study investigates creators’ multi-platform practices through in-depth interviews. We...

Volunteer moderators (mods) play significant roles in developing moderation standards and dealing with harmful content in their micro-communities. However, little work explores how volunteer mods work as a team. In line with prior work about understanding volunteer moderation, we interview 40 volunteer mods on Twitch --- a leading live streaming pl...

Volunteer moderators (mods) play significant roles in developing moderation standards and dealing with harmful content in their micro-communities. However, little work explores how volunteer mods work as a team. In line with prior work about understanding volunteer moderation, we interview 40 volunteer mods on Twitch - a leading live streaming plat...

When people have the freedom to create and post content on the internet, particularly anonymously, they do not always respect the rules and regulations of the websites on which they post, leaving other unsuspecting users vulnerable to sexism, racism, threats, and other unacceptable content in their daily cyberspace diet. However, content moderators...

Live streaming is a form of media that allows streamers to directly interact with their audience. Previous research has explored mental health, Twitch.tv and live streaming platforms, and users' social motivations behind watching live streams separately. However, few have explored how these all intertwine in conversations involving intimate, self-d...

The latest advances in NLP (natural language processing) have led to the launch of the much needed machine-driven toxic chat detection. Nevertheless, people continuously find new forms of hateful expressions that are easily identified by humans, but not by machines. One such common expression is the mix of text and emotes, a type of visual toxic ch...

Urban green space is thought to contribute to citizen happiness by promoting physical and mental health. Nevertheless, how urban green space and happiness are related across many countries with different socioeconomic conditions has not been explored. By measuring the urban green space score (UGS) from high-resolution satellite imagery of 90 global...

Modern social media platforms like Twitch, YouTube, etc., embody an open space for content creation and consumption. However, an unintended consequence of such content democratization is the proliferation of toxicity and abuse that content creators get subjected to. Commercial and volunteer content moderators play an indispensable role in identifyi...

Content moderation is an essential part of online community health and governance. While much of extant research is centered on what happens to the content, moderation also involves the management of violators. This study focuses on how moderators (mods) make decisions about their actions after the violation takes place but before the sanction by e...

Cancel culture is a new catalyst for digital hate seen in various media platforms, in which large groups of people publicly criticize the victim’s actions and withdraw their support from that victim, leading to serious consequences for their livelihood and wellbeing. This study examines how political leaning and cultural values affect a person’s pa...

While much work focuses on the impacts of the pandemic on people's psychological and physical health, it is still unclear about the practical changes and adaptations. In this work, we interviewed 46 participants who were forced to work from home. Results show that there is an increased reliance on asynchronous communication, which slowed communicat...

Modern social media platforms like Twitch, YouTube, etc., embody an open space for content creation and consumption. However, an unintended consequence of such content democratization is the proliferation of toxicity and abuse that content creators get subjected to. Commercial and volunteer content moderators play an indispensable role in identifyi...

The digital patronage model provides content creators the opportunity to receive sustained financial support directly from their fans. Patreon is a popular digital patronage platform that represents a prime site for the study of creators’ relational labor with their fans. Through in-depth interviews with 21 Patreon creators, this study investigated...

With the flourish of collaborative and social technologies in the market since the pandemic, there is limited understanding of user's attitudes towards these technologies. We aim to understand teleworkers' perceptions of technology use during the pandemic and interviewed 46 teleworkers. We found that teleworkers generally hold a positive attitude t...

Figure 1: These are screenshots from the channel of popular streamer SypherPK. Left (A), is the "about" page for the streamer's channel, which has a section for rules. Right (B) is a screenshot of when a stream is happening. When a user tries to type in the channel's chat for the first time, a pop-up window will appear with "chat rules". ABSTRACT R...

Volunteer moderators actively engage in online content management , such as removing toxic content and sanctioning anti-normative behaviors in user-governed communities. The synchronicity and ephemerality of live-streaming communities pose unique moderation challenges. Based on interviews with 21 volunteer moderators on Twitch, we mapped out 13 mod...

Financial transactions play a critical role in people’s interpersonal relationships since money is a sensitive and complex component of everyday life. In particular, emerging digital peer-to-peer (P2P) payment applications further complicate how people deal with each other regarding money. Yet, there is a lack of empirical evidence on how and why s...

Live streaming is a unique form of media that creates a direct line of interaction between streamers and viewers. While previous research has explored the social motivations of those who stream and watch streams in the gaming community, there is a lack of research that investigates intimate self-disclosure in this context, such as discussing sensit...

Content moderation is a critical service performed by a variety of people on social media, protecting users from offensive or harmful content by reviewing and removing either the content or the perpetrator. These moderators fall into one of two categories: employees or volunteers. Prior research has suggested that there are differences in the effec...

Urban green space has been regarded as contributing to citizen happiness by promoting physical and mental health. However, how urban green space and happiness are related across many countries of different socioeconomic conditions has not been explained well. By measuring urban green space score (UGS) from high-resolution Sentinel-2 satellite image...

Social media feeds provide a lot of information that would be of great value to law enforcement. Previous research dedicated considerable attention to sharing large-scale public safety incidents on social media. However, little research focused on minor public safety incidents. According to collective action theory, rational people would not partic...

The digital presentation of gender and sexuality has been a long-standing concern in HCI and CSCW. There is also a growing interest in exploring more nuanced presentations of identity afforded in emerging online social spaces that have not been thoroughly studied. In this paper, we endeavor to contribute towards this research agenda in yet another...

Esports commentating, the practice of reporting, explaining, and elaborating live competitive gameplay to spectators, is a centerpiece of esports as a rapidly growing spectator sport and an essential component of today's growing gaming/live streaming ecosystem. In particular, esports commentators face three unique challenges: the preparation for co...

Exploring communication dynamics in digital social spaces such as massively multiplayer online games and 2D/3D virtual worlds has been a long standing concern in HCI and CSCW. As online social spaces evolve towards more natural embodied interaction, it is important to explore how non-verbal communication can be supported in more nuanced ways in the...

Celebrities’ self-disclosures about their mental health issues can enhance public awareness of mental illness such as depression. As online live streaming becomes a popular choice for media entertainment, microcelebrities such as video streamers may have similar influence over their audience. Using an online survey (N = 474), this study examined ho...

Research examining online social capital has grown since the introduction of information communication technologies (ICTs) into our everyday lives. This paper discusses recent trends in the research that examines how people are using ICTs to accumulate, increase, and utilize their offline and online social capital resources. These trends include th...

This study examines gaming motivations for two different genres of multiplayer games—casual social network games (SNGs) and massively multiplayer online (MMO) games—and tests for gender differences in motivation after considering genre. We conducted a survey of 515 SNG players and 505 MMO players in the U.S. through Mechanical Turk, asking about th...

While the idea of the filter bubble, in which people are sheltered from challenging and disagreeable information online, is a valid concern for democracy, it requires much theoretical sophistication and empirical support. This paper explores the extent and scope of the filter bubble, employing the concept of "cross-cutting exposure," or exposure to...

People often learn programming in face-to-face courses or online tutorials. Interactive computer tutors---systems that provide learning content interactively---are becoming more common in online tools such as those teaching computer programming. Studies have shown that teachers, interactive computer tutors, and the combination of both are efficient...

The emergence of Facebook Reactions provides new opportunities to explore the nature of paralinguistic digital affordances (PDAs; lightweight one-click social media response cues). Guided by adaptive structuration theory and the concept of cognitive automaticity, a survey of 255 individuals aged 18–24 assessed the cognitive processes and communicat...

Harassment is an issue in online communities with the live streaming platform Twitch being no exception. In this study, we surveyed 375 Twitch users in person at TwitchCon, asking them about who should be responsible for deciding what should be allowed and what strategies they perceived to be effective in handling harassment. We found that users th...

Research on the governance of online communities often requires exchanges and interactions between researchers and moderators. While a growing body of work has studied commercial content moderation in the context of platform governance and policy enforcement, only a small number of studies have begun to explore the work of unpaid, volunteer communi...

The safety of passengers of rideshare apps has received attention from researchers, yet there is a lack of research on safety of rideshare drivers in the context of CSCW and HCI. As drivers are also an important user in the ecosystem of the ridesharing systems, we conducted interviews with drivers in the U.S. to understand how they, individually an...

Digital patronage is the act of delivering recurring direct support to content creators online. In this paper, we define digital patronage and examine why patrons engage in this behavior on the live streaming platform Twitch. Our mixed method research illustrates patrons' motivations, how patronage motivations differ from that of donations, and the...

Charity streaming is a novel and increasingly popular form of fundraising where content creators stream content during a fixed period of time to raise money and awareness. Many charity streams involve people playing games for a prolonged period of time. In this study, we interviewed charity organizations about what this new form of fundraising mean...

As a popular and free-to-play multiplayer online survival game, Fortnite not only offers novel game mechanics but also allows players to purchase special in-game items using real money. Based on an online survey of 215 Fortnite players, this paper investigates in-game behaviors that can be used to explain who is more likely to spend money in Fortni...

Micro-news are abbreviated summaries or teasers of news content that are often accompanied with links to longer articles. We investigated motivations and habits of micro-news consumption through mobile social media platforms and how these variables relate to continuation intention. We surveyed 250 U.S. adults and identified six motivations using a...

Live streaming has enabled eSports to become more accessible, ranging from professionally organized tournaments to individuals hosting from their bedroom. While different aspects of eSports have been investigated in separate contexts, in this article, we report findings of two survey studies to explore eSports as a holistic media ecosystem that inc...

Twitch is one of the largest live streaming platforms and is unique from other social media in that it supports synchronous interaction and enables users to engage in moderation of the content through varied technical tools, which include auto-moderation tools provided by Twitch, third-party applications, and home-brew apps. The authors interviewed...

Rideshare drivers provide rides for strangers and are exposed to safety-related issues as much as passengers. We used a qualitative research approach to understand the safety concerns of rideshare drivers. The questions investigated were: What makes rideshare drivers feel unsafe? How do rideshare drivers ensure their safety? What are the factors re...

Social media allows the readers of online news posts more engagement with the article through comments and comment Liking. Motivations for such actions are important because engagement around a comment increases the accessibility of that comment to other readers, leading to a far-reaching effect on the news post ground truth. Yet, motivations behin...

People typically learn programming from teachers in in-person courses or online tutorials. Interactive computer tutors---systems that deliver learning content interactively---have become more prevalent in online settings for teaching skills such as computer programming. Research has shown the efficiency and effectiveness of learning programming fro...

The ability to engage in real-time text conversations is an important feature on live streaming platforms. The moderation of this text content relies heavily on the work of unpaid volunteers. This study reports on interviews with 20 people who moderate for Twitch micro communities, defined as channels that are built around a single or group of stre...

New features of social network platforms afford users the ability to navigate potentially sensitive situations in ways they could not before. This study surveyed 260 Facebook users to uncover how people are using this social media platform’s new “reaction” buttons to respond to others’ posts about negative topics such as traumatic life situations,...

Team activities that were traditionally offline are increasingly incorporating mediated elements where there is a mix of physical and computer-assisted activities. In this study, we provide a preliminary insight into this understudied yet emerging genre of mixed-form CSCW. Specifically, we present a qualitative research of team formation and coordi...

In this paper, we present an interview study of 13 recent newcomers to New York City, focusing on their early experiences of exploration and use of mobile location services and other tools for getting to know their new city. We describe their reasons and intentions behind exploratory practices using digital tools and emphasize how they make meaning...

This article investigates whether knowledge of Internet usage among older adults is related to social capital as well as their expectations to obtain social support online. A U.S. national survey of adults aged 60 and older (n = 1,101) found that Internet literacy is significantly associated with their expected Internet support and bridging and bon...

In this paper, we introduce live streaming commerce-e-commerce integrated with real-time social interaction via live streams. Using a uses and gratifications framework, we identified four motivations (enjoyment of interaction, substitutability of personal examination, need for community, and trend setting) related to live streaming commerce, and ex...

This study examines the relationship between social motivations, pro-social relationship outcomes, and two types of game play—habitual and compulsive—in the context of simulation games on Facebook. Social motivations were significantly associated with compulsive game play, but not habitual game play. Compulsive play was a positive predictor of pro-...

This study examines the relationship between social motivations, pro-social relationship outcomes, and two types of game play—habitual and compulsive—in the context of simulation games on Facebook. Social motivations were significantly associated with compulsive game play, but not habitual game play. Compulsive play was a positive predictor of pro-...

Snapchat has quickly brought innovative features to the area of social media interactions, one being their Face Lenses, which are digital masks that add a different form of interaction to everyday pictures and videos using augmented reality. In this study, we interviewed 18 Snapchat users to understand their behavior with these Face Lenses, specifi...

This study reports screen-viewing practices in the social virtual reality platform Altspace, based on immersive observations. We identified what type of content is being watched and how the screen content facilitates, complements, or is the focus of social interactions.

Watching live streams as part of the online shopping experience is a relatively new phenomenon. In this paper, we examine live streaming shopping, conceptualizing it as a type of online shopping that incorporates real-time social interaction. Live streaming shopping can happen in two ways: live streaming embedded in e-commerce, or e-commerce integr...

On live streams, viewers can support streamers through various methods ranging from well-wishing text messages to money. In this study (N=230) we surveyed viewers who had given money to a streamer. We identified six motivations for why they gave money to their favorite live streamer. We then examined how factors related to viewer, streamer, and vie...

Extended periods of uninterrupted sedentary behavior are detrimental to long-term health. While prolonged sitting is prevalent among information workers, it is difficult for them to break prolonged sedentary behavior due to the nature of their work. This work aims to understand information workers' intentions & practices around standing or moving b...

Social media users incidentally get exposed to news when their networks provide content that they would otherwise not seek out purposefully. We developed a scale of incidental news exposure on social media and conducted a survey to examine its antecedents. We found that information received through weak ties, rather than strong ties, was significan...

This study investigated the factors that affect the relationship between cross-cutting exposure and political participation. It was found that cross-cutting exposure to politically disagreeable news on Facebook, overall, was associated with increased political participation both online and offline. The association was stronger when the cross-cuttin...

This study examined the effect of touching a warm or cold surface while interacting with a chatbot to see if temperature contributes to feelings of closeness with the artificial conversational agent. Our two-group experiment (N= 44) found no differences between hot and cold conditions in people's liking of the chatbot, but found a main effect of ex...

This study documents users' changes in psychological wellbeing across the lifecycle of their participation in an online community. Through in-depth interviews with 30 long-term users of Everything2.com, and content analysis of their posts, we found that psychological wellbeing plays a large role in the evolution of how users participate in the comm...

In this study, we interviewed players of daily fantasy sports to understand their information management and decision-making behaviors. Due to the rapid cycle of decision-making that is required to play daily fantasy sports, we found that participants engaged in sophisticated and complex methods of information compilation and evaluation, using a wi...

In this paper we report an empirical study of how and what types of social support eSports players can experience from their gameplay. Specifically, we interviewed 26 eSports players and sought out their first-person descriptions of experiences of social support. We found that even though most players started out as strangers, the context of eSport...