Harassment, especially of marginalized individuals, on networked gaming and social media platforms is a significant issue, yet few HCI practitioners create interventions tackling toxicity online.
Aligning ourselves with the growing cohort of technology design activists taking an intentional stance on social change, we contribute code to a community-driven moderation intervention called the AnyKey GLHF pledge.
Research assistants engage hands-on with a web application reaching 1.6 million+ users; propose new features with wireframes; program designs in Ruby on Rails; create open source pull requests on GitHub; see their code deployed to production; and study the effects of their software changes.
Gaming is a historically toxic environment for women, people of color, disabled and LGBTQ+ folks. But on Twitch, minority streamers and their allies are creating safe spaces for their communities and keeping the trolls at bay.
Inspired by their achievements, we began an in-depth ethnographic study in 2018 to explore how these creators effectively moderate their communities and monetize their content, while still maintaining the values of integrity and inclusivity that are at the core of their identities.
Research assistants propose new subcommunities to study (e.g. Black TTRPGers, femme FPS solo queuers, lonely creators); identify & recruit participants; design & conduct interviews; transcribe & analyze data; and contribute to scholarly articles & presentations summarizing our findings.
Computer scientists and scholars from related disciplines enrolled either at Smith or another one of the Five Colleges are generally eligible to join the lab. However, only students who have taken an intermediate/advanced course with Prof. Johanna Brewer, like software engineering or platform activism, will be recruited as undergraduate research assistants.
The research we conduct in the IDLab requires the hands-on training of upper-level HCI-focused courses, so if you think you are interested in joining us, take CSC223 or CSC356 first!
After successfully completing the prerequisites, aspiring IDLabbers should express their desire to enroll in one of the special studies courses relating to our open research projects. To ensure quality supervision and a comfortable social atmosphere, only a handful of seats will be available each semester. Anyone not initially accepted is always welcome to reapply.
Students who demonstrate an ability to contribute to our ongoing team efforts will be invited to continue their work in the summer during SURF. Those who wish to propose independent research (either as a self-guided special studies or honors thesis) must show they have mastered essential methodologies before blazing trails of their own.
Lab Spaces
Bass Hall 105
Young 111A
Mailing Address
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063 USA
Email
jbrewer@smith.edu
Twitter
@deadroxy
Discord
ultraroxy