Susan Herring

Indiana University Bloomington | IUB · Department of Information and Library Science

This study explores metadiscourse about Chinese language varieties used by two non-native Chinese speakers on Bilibili through the lens of citizen sociolinguistics. Drawing on a meaning-based content analysis, we analyze danmu comments by Chinese internet users in response to a video featuring the non-native speakers’ linguistic performances. The f...

Video face filters play an increasingly important role in digitally mediated self-presentation for people around the world. We interviewed young adult video filter users from China, India, South Korea, Spain, and the United States, asking what video filters they use, who they use filters with, and how. Participants demonstrated sensitivity to publi...

Emoji can modify a textual utterance; constitute a stand-alone speech act; or virtually perform an action. These three broad types of pragmatic function are usually treated separately in the literature when they are treated at all. We classify these functions in a systematic, unified manner by drawing on the classic speech act notion of illocutiona...

In a controlled lab experiment, we compared how in-person and robot-mediated communicative settings affected attitudes towards communicators and discourse phenomena related to conversational negotiation. We used a mock interview within-participants experiment design where each participant (mock interviewee) experienced both types of communication w...

This study examines the impact of graphicons (emoticons, emojis, and stickers) on the use of sentence-final particles (SFPs) in Chinese based on a 13-year longitudinal corpus of 941,020 comments posted on the popular Chinese social media platform Bilibili. Quantitative analysis shows that graphicon frequencies increase while SFP frequencies decreas...

This study investigates how Augmented Reality (AR) beauty filters affect perception of the motives and trustworthiness of a stranger in online social interaction. One-on-one Zoom interviews were conducted with 44 video filter users from five different cultural backgrounds – China, India, South Korea, Spain, and the US – about their reactions to a h...

How digital communication technologies are affecting language, literacy, and language change has excited considerable speculation and inspired a growing body of scholarship. At the heart of this question is the notion of grammar, or the set of structural rules that govern the composition of words, phrases, and sentences in a language. Grammatical u...

This study examines the evolutionary trajectory of graphicons in a 13-year corpus of comments from BiliBili, a popular Chinese video-sharing platform. Findings show that emoticons (kaomoji) rose and fell in frequency, while emojis and stickers are both presently on the rise. Graphicon distributions differ in comments and replies to comments. There...

Sticker use is an increasingly popular part of daily messaging activity. However, little is known regarding the types, functions, and outcomes of sticker use in authentic online communications. To investigate these phenomena, we analysed sticker use in five small mobile-messaging-facilitated discussion groups initiated by students for course projec...

This chapter describes the methods and the overall findings of the Understanding Emoji Survey, which we administered online in early 2018 to determine how social media users interpret the pragmatic functions of popular emoji types in the discourse context of comments posted to public Facebook groups. The findings generally validate Herring and Dain...

We compared psychological distance in a mock job interview that was conducted either in-person or via mobile telepresence. In the mobile telepresence setting, the interviewers communicated through a telepresence robot. In one of the first explorations of how mobile telepresence affected psychological distance, we analyzed use of pronouns that sugge...

Each new type of graphical icon (graphicon) in CMC has been more complex and multimodal than its predecessor. For this reason, and because of their novelty, Konrad, Herring, and Choi (2020) claim that new graphicon types are initially restricted to use in intimate relationships. We explore this proposition qualitatively by interviewing student user...

We systematically analyze the ordering of elements in emoji sequences, or uninterrupted strings of two or more different emoji, on Sina Weibo, a prominent Chinese microblogging site. We find that 83% of the sequences can be analyzed as displaying a linear constituent order, with variants of Object Verb Subject (OVS) order occurring most frequently....

Advances in facial recognition technology have enabled graphical filters that can track a user's facial expressions in real time. One such application is Apple's Animoji feature for the iPhone. This paper examines gender differences in Animoji use and adoption. In-depth, semi-structured interviews with 33 Animoji users (19 F; 13 M; 1 non-binary) we...

Advances in facial recognition technology have enabled graphical filters that can track a user’s facial expressions in real time. One such application is Apple’s Animoji feature for the iPhone. This paper examines gender differences in Animoji use and adoption. In-depth, semi-structured interviews with 33 Animoji users (19 F; 13 M; 1 non-binary) we...

An online survey, the Understanding Emoji Survey , was conducted to assess how English-speaking social media users interpret the pragmatic functions of emoji in examples adapted from public Facebook comments, based on a modified version of [15]’s taxonomy of functions. Of the responses received (N = 519; 351 females, 120 males, 48 “other”; 354 unde...

This study posits that graphicon use follows an evolutionary trajectory characterized by stages. Drawing on evidence that the uses and functions of emoticons have changed over time and that the introduction of emoji affected the popularity and usage of emoticons, we examine the uses of the newer types, emoji and stickers, and consider the relations...

As a dynamic, mask-like form of digital self-representation, Animoji on the Apple iPhone X afford interesting new possibilities for mediated communication. However, the effect that Animoji animators seek to create depends heavily on the characteristics of their spoken voice. We investigate spoken behavior in Animoji video clips shared publicly on Y...

This case study examined patterns in online communication using computer-mediated discourse analysis to better understand how teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence are manifested in an online learning environment. The findings indicate that study participants actively participated in the discussion. The instructor and facilitat...

Susan Herring, the originator of the computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA) paradigm, describes efforts to extend CMDA over time in order to address changes in computer-mediated communication (CMC), such as nontextual communication and the trend toward convergence of multiple modes of CMC in a single platform. Following a review of three broad...

The popular press is currently rife with speculation that emoji are becoming a global, digitally-mediated language. Sequences of emoji that function like verbal utterances potentially lend strong support to this claim. We employ computer-mediated discourse analysis to analyze the pragmatic meanings conveyed through emoji sequences and their rhetori...

Research is scarce on how direct and indirect support seeking strategies affect support exchange in online health communities. Moreover, prior research has relied mostly on content analysis of forum posts at the post level. In order to generate a more fine-grained analysis of support exchange, we conducted content analysis at the utterance level, t...

Previous studies have reported gender differences in emoji use and attitudes toward emoji. Here we ask whether, and if so, to what extent, females and males also interpret emoji use differently. We conducted an online survey to assess how different genders interpret the pragmatic functions of emoji in their local discourse contexts, based on [HD17'...

In this document we explain the need and plans for a SIG Meeting at CHI on telepresence robots. We describe the organization of this SIG, our expected attendees, procedure and schedule of topics to be discussed, as well as our recruitment plan. Our goal is to provide a forum to discuss key issues surrounding the uses and usefulness of telepresence...

This study explores how male and female users of Voicethread.com, an interactive multimodal web 2.0 platform that allows asynchronous commenting via text, audio, and video, communicate and perform identity through self-expression in different semiotic modes. A quantitative computer-mediated discourse analysis of three public English-language Voicet...

Since telepresence robots began entering the US commercial market over a decade ago, telepresence robot‐mediated communication (RMC) has become increasingly prevalent and relevant. In this essay, I describe key technological properties of telepresence robots, summarize findings regarding communication and social interaction through such robots, and...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide ebook designers and researchers with design insights by promoting historical knowledge about books and reading as sources of ideas to implement in current and future ebooks. Design/methodology/approach The authors review historical features of books and practices of reading that have been implement...

This panel will bring together experts on robotic telepresence from HCI and related fields. Panelists will engage the audience in a discussion of visions, opportunities and challenges for the future of telepresence robots.

This study investigates to what extent greetings on a social network site popular with South Asians are associated with the degree of interpersonal closeness of the users, educated middle class Bengalis in the United States. Computer-mediated discourse analysis, face-to-face interviews, and participant observation were employed to analyze the textu...

An Auto-Glosso-Technobiography. This book began with Carmen Lee's auto-technobiography. Similarly, I will start this epilogue by briefly relating my auto-glosso-technobiography, or the story of my interests in language and technology. Greek glosso-'language' is infixed to limit the scope of the account, since some of my interests in technology-medi...

This article is concerned with how teenage boys and girls present themselves through online social media such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and chat forums. Based on research conducted mostly in the United States, it describes and considers the implications of social media use, profile construction, visual and textual self-presentation, profile visi...

The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) relies heavily on propaganda in the form of videos distributed over social media to recruit supporters and new members to its cause, including from the U.S. The U.S. government has countered with anti-ISIS propaganda videos; however, sources claim that the U.S. is losing the propaganda war. We evaluate tha...

This research-in-progress paper reports on a National Science Foundation funded project aimed at examining ways to engage women and girls in courses of study that will qualify and motivate them for information technology (IT)-related careers. This Information Technology Work Force (ITWF) award provides support to investigate 15 tertiary education p...

Previous research suggests that the current trend towards applied information technology (IT) programs can potentially expand the involvement of women in computing. This paper reports on a Web-based survey of female and male students in computer science and applied IT programs in five public U.S. universities, designed to determine if there were di...

We analyze user behavior on two music distribution websites, SoundCloud.com and Last.fm, using a computer-mediated discourse analysis approach. The broad goal is to infer patterns of use that can inform the development of system/site designs to facilitate communication among online users. The specific goal is to analyze the actions users perform th...

Virtual marriage is a complex social activity in virtual worlds, yet it has received relatively little research attention. What happens when an important relationship such as marriage is transformed into gameplay? In this paper we present an empirical study of how players perceive, experience , and interpret their in-game marriages, especially with...

Online dating systems are the most common way people meet their marriage partners online. Nevertheless, online daters struggle to evaluate personality traits of potential partners using profile pages and private messaging in these systems. Meanwhile, Multiplayer Online Games (MOGs) have emerged as a popular way young people find romantic partners f...

Virtual marriage is a complex social activity in virtual worlds, yet it has received relatively little research attention. What happens when an important relationship such as marriage is transformed into gameplay? In this paper we present an empirical study of how players perceive, experience, and interpret their in-game marriages, especially with...

Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society: General Session Dedicated to the Contributions of Charles J. Fillmore (1994)

We manually analyzed a corpus of Tumblr posts for sentiment, looking at images, text, and their combination. A dataset was constructed of posts with both text and images, as well as a dataset of posts containing only text, along with a codebook for classifying and counting the content in each. This paper reports on the construction of the overall c...

Computer-mediated communication (CMC) on the Internet has been claimed to possess a degree of anonymity that makes the gender of online communicators irrelevant or invisible; this purportedly allows women and men to participate and be recognized for their contributions equally, in contrast with patterns of male dominance traditionally observed in f...

This panel brings together HCI researchers who are primarily remote workers, in order to discuss their technological solutions and social practices. We aim for an engaging, fun, and informative discussion appropriate for researchers interested in remote collaboration and computer-mediated communication.

EDITOR'S SUMMARY On receiving the 2013 ASIS&T Research Award, Susan Herring reflected on her early interest in computer‐mediated communication (CMC) in 1991, when the field was novel, limited and barely recognized. The intersection of linguistics and digital technology were intriguing and offered potential for rich discovery. Data sources have grow...

This study analyzes how teens represent themselves through their profile photographs on a popular nonymous chat site. Using visual content analysis methods, we analyzed 400 profile photographs, controlling for the self-reported gender and the apparent race of the photographic subject. The analysis finds significant differences in gaze, posture, dre...

The term “emoticons” short for “emotion icons” refers to graphic signs, such as the smiley face, that often accompany computer-mediated textual communication. They are most often characterized as iconic indicators of emotion, conveyed through a communication channel that is parallel to the linguistic one. In this chapter, it is argued that this con...

This exploratory study discusses how in-game marriage can affect (and effect) Multiplayer Online Game (MOG) players’ collaborative behaviors through an analysis of Audition, a non-violent, non-fantasy dance battle MOG which mediates and facilitates couple-related collaborative behaviors. On the basis of a content analysis of couple-related screensh...

We analyze user behavior on SoundCloud.com, a web-based music distribution site, using the methodology of computer-mediated discourse analysis. The broad goal is to infer patterns of use that can inform the development of methods to facilitate communication among online users. In order to achieve this goal, we analyze SoundCloud comments and identi...

Telepresence robotics is a sophisticated form of robotic remote control in which a human operator has a sense of being on location – that is, of being telepresent. I propose a demonstration of two telepresence robots, one floor model (VGo) and one tabletop model (KUBI). In this proposal, I describe the technology and briefly summarize the research...

How new digital communication technologies are affecting language and language change has excited considerable speculation and inspired a growing body of scholarship.Keywords:computer mediated communication;morphology;orthography;syntax;typography;grammar

This paper reports the results of a longitudinal study of 2562 images on the homepages of successful American and Chinese online store websites,with the goal of determining whether cultural factors impact their visual presentation and evolution. Descriptive and statistical content analyses reveal that the U.S. and Chinese online store sites showed...

This study analyzes linguistic versions of the Web pages of 1,140 universities in 57 countries via a content analysis of language use at three points in time over a five-year period. The results are partially inconsistent with previous theories of Internet multilingualism. As an alternative, we propose a tri-level multiglossia model in which the na...

Proceedings of the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (1988), pp. 280-292

Wikipedia advocates a strict “neutral point of view” (NPOV) policy. However, although originally a U.S-based, English-language phenomenon, the online, user-created encyclopedia now has versions in many languages. This study examines the extent to which content and perspectives vary across cultures by comparing articles about famous persons in the P...

This study evaluates empirically the proposition implicit in much recent gender and CMC research that expressions of gender distinctness among teens in online environments are becoming less frequent and less traditional. Gender preferences were analyzed in linguistic features and communication styles in synchronous text messages, along with self‐pr...

A growing body of research analyzes the linguistic and discourse properties of communication in online social media. Most of the analysis, especially at the discourse level, is done manually by human researchers. This talk explores how the findings and techniques of computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA), a paradigm I have been developing and...

Project-based learning engages students in problem solving through artefact design. However, previous studies of online project-based learning have focused primarily on the dynamics of online collaboration; students' knowledge construction throughout this process has not been examined thoroughly. This case study analyzed the relationship between st...

The term "emoticons" -short for "emotion icons" -refers to graphic signs, such as the smiley face, that often accompany computer-mediated textual communication. They are most often characterized as iconic indicators of emotion, conveyed through a communication channel that is parallel to the linguistic one. In this article, it is argued that this c...

Are established methods of content analysis (CA) adequate to analyze web content, or should new methods be devised to address new technological developments? This article addresses this question by contrasting narrow and broad interpretations of the concept of web content analysis. The utility of a broad interpretation that subsumes the narrow one...

This panel will provide a global perspective on Wikipedia research. The literature on Wikipedia is mostly anecdotal, and most of the research has focused attention primarily on the English Wikipedia examining the accuracy of entries compared to established online encyclopedias (Emigh & Herring, 2005; Giles, 2005; Rosenzweig, 2006) and analyzing the...

This study analyzed rhythm and timing in 18 instant messenger (IM) conversations between one advisor and four graduate students (4 dyads), hypothesizing that individuals would show a consistent style across sessions but would differ from one another across dyads. ANOVA results supported the hypotheses for individual students and dyads; however, the...

How actively do users chat, with whom, about what, and how coherently, when they are shooting enemies and dodging bullets in a fast-paced virtual gaming environment? This paper reports on a study of public text chat in BZFlag, an open source capture-the-flag game in which user avatars are tanks. Chat data were analyzed using methods of content and...

The microblogging service Twitter is in the process of being appropriated for conversational interaction and is starting to be used for collaboration, as well. In an attempt to determine how well Twitter supports user-to-user exchanges, what people are using Twitter for, and what usage or design modifications would make it (more) usable as a tool f...

This study analyzes gender variation in nonstandard typography--specifically, abbreviations and insertions--in mobile phone text messages (SMS) posted to a public Italian interactive television (iTV) program. All broadcast SMS were collected for a period of 2 days from the Web archive for the iTV program, and the frequency and distribution of abbre...

The “shrinking pipeline” of women who ascend through the ranks in computer science education programs and careers is by now a familiar problem. Women drop out at rates faster than men at all levels of educational and professional advancement, resulting in a gender gap especially pronounced at the highest levels of the computing workforce, and that...

Language and (or “on”) the → Internet refers to human language (or language intended to be human‐like, such as the linguistic output of artificial intelligence agents) produced and displayed through computer‐mediated communication (CMC) systems that are mostly text based and mostly reciprocally interactive, such as email, listserv lists, newsgroups...

This study investigates the effects of gender consciousness among students enrolled in IT programs at five U.S. universities. Based on 136 in-depth face-to-face interviews, we assess the overall level of gender consciousness among the IT students, proposing a new distinction between awareness of gender inequity and concern about such inequity, and...

communication;interdisciplinary study;discourse analysis;social practice;computer networks

Text messaging on interactive television in Italy is a media convergence phenomenon involving short message service, traditional television, and the World Wide Web. This study investigates the frequency and coherence of viewer-to-viewer textual exchanges on an Italian iTV SMS program, employing methods of interaction analysis and the visualization...

Unlike traditional genres of writing, interactive text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC) exhibits considerable typographic variability. This study analyzes gender variation in abbreviations and insertions in mobile phone text messages (SMS) posted to a public Italian interactive television (iTV) program. All broadcast SMS were collected f...

The “shrinking pipeline” of women who ascend through the ranks in computer science education programs and careers is by now a familiar problem. Women drop out at rates faster than men at all levels of educational and professional advancement, resulting in a gender gap especially pronounced at the highest levels of the computing workforce, and that...

This case study evaluates the potential of synchronous chat for deep learning in the context of a distance education program between two universities in different cultural contexts, with a focus on interaction and facilitation. Three rubrics—functional moves, social construction of knowledge, and teaching presence—were applied in a longitudinal con...