Zuheng Ming

Zuheng Ming



Assistant professor at Université Sorbonne Paris Nord

Posts by Collection

articles

Does Habermas Understand the Internet? The Algorithmic Construction of the Blogo/Public Sphere

Published in Gnovis, 2009

Habermasians have been debating about the role of the Internet in the public sphere, but they have all taken for granted the highly-automated software infrastructures that mediate our knowledge of the blogosphere.

Recommended citation: Geiger, R. Stuart (2009). “Does Habermas Understand the Internet? The Algorithmic Construction of the Blogo/Public Sphere.” Gnovis: A Journal of Communication, Culture, and Technology. 10(1). http://www.stuartgeiger.com/papers/gnovis-habermas-blogopublic-sphere.pdf

The Social Roles of Bots and Assisted Editing Tools

Published in Proceedings of Wikisym, 2009

A short paper showing the recent explosive growth of automated editors (or bots) in Wikipedia, which have taken on many new tasks in administrative spaces.

Recommended citation: Geiger, R. Stuart (2009). “The Social Roles of Bots and Assisted Editing Tools.” In Proceedings of the 5th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration. New York: ACM Digital Library. http://www.stuartgeiger.com/papers/geiger-wikisym-bots.pdf

The Work of Sustaining Order in Wikipedia: The Banning of a Vandal

Published in Proceedings of CSCW , 2010

This paper traces out a heterogeneous network of humans and non-humans involved in the identification and banning of a single vandal in Wikipedia.

Recommended citation: Geiger, R. Stuart and David Ribes (2010). “The Work of Sustaining Order in Wikipedia: The Banning of a Vandal.” In Proceedings of the 2010 ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2012). New York: ACM Digital Library. http://www.stuartgeiger.com/papers/cscw-sustaining-order-wikipedia.pdf

Trace Ethnography: Following Coordination through Documentary Practices

Published in Proceedings of HICSS , 2011

We detail the methodology of ‘trace ethnography’, which combines the richness of participant-observation with the wealth of data in logs so as to reconstruct patterns and practices of users in distributed sociotechnical systems

Recommended citation: Geiger, R. Stuart and David Ribes (2011). “Trace Ethnography: Following Coordination through Documentary Practices.” In Proceedings of the 44th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS). http://www.stuartgeiger.com/trace-ethnography-hicss-geiger-ribes.pdf

Participation in Wikipedia’s Article Deletion Processes

Published in Proceedings of WikiSym, 2011

This paper investigates Wikipedia's article deletion processes, finding that it is heavily populated by specialists.

Recommended citation: Geiger, R. Stuart and Heather Ford. (2011) “Participation in Wikipedia’s Deletion Processes.” In Proceedings of the 7th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration (WikiSym 2011). New York: ACM Digital Library. http://www.stuartgeiger.com/papers/article-deletion-wikisym-geiger-ford.pdf

The Lives of Bots

Published in Wikipedia: A Critical Point of View, 2011

I describe the complex social and technical environment in which bots exist in Wikipedia, emphasizing not only how bots produce order and enforce rules, but also how humans produce bots and negotiate rules around their operation.

Recommended citation: Geiger, R. Stuart. (2011). “The Lives of Bots.” In G. Lovink and N. Tkacz (eds.) In Wikipedia: A Critical Point of View. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures. http://www.stuartgeiger.com/lives-of-bots-wikipedia-cpov.pdf

Black-boxing the user: internet protocol over xylophone players (IPoXP)

Published in Proceedings of CHI (alt.CHI), 2012

We introduce IP over Xylophone Players (IPoXP), a novel Internet protocol between two computers using xylophone-based Arduino interfaces

Recommended citation: Geiger, R. Stuart, Yoon J. Jeong, and Emily Manders (2012). “Black-Boxing the User: Internet Protocol over Xylophone Players.” In Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (alt.CHI 2012). New York: ACM Digital Library. http://stuartgeiger.com/ipoxp.pdf

Defense Mechanism or Socialization Tactic? Improving Wikipedia’s Notifications to Rejected Contributors

Published in Proceedings of ICWSM, 2012

A descriptive study of Wikipedia's highly-automated socialization processes and an A/B test to improve templated messages to newcomers.

Recommended citation: Geiger, R. Stuart, Aaron Halfaker, Maryana Pinchuk, and Steven Walling (2012). “Defense Mechanism or Socialization Tactic? Improving Wikipedia’s Notifications to Rejected Contributors.” In Proceedings of the 2012 International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM 2012). http://stuartgeiger.com/defense-mechanism-icwsm.pdf

“Writing up rather than writing down”: Becoming Wikipedia Literate

Published in Proceedings of WikiSym, 2012

We introduce and advocate a multi-faceted theory of literacy to investigate the knowledges and organizational forms are required to improve participation in Wikipedia’s communities.

Recommended citation: Ford, Heather and R. Stuart Geiger. (2012). “”Writing up rather than writing down”: Becoming Wikipedia Literate.” In Proceedings of the 8th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration (WikiSym 2012). New York: ACM Digital Library. http://www.stuartgeiger.com/becoming-wikipedia-literate.pdf

Artifacts that Organize: Delegation in the Distributed Organization

Published in Information and Organization, 2012

This paper studies the role of computational infrastructure and organizational structure in the Open Science Grid.

Recommended citation: Ribes, David, Steve Jackson, R. Stuart Geiger, Matt C. Burton, and Tom Finholt (2012). “Artifacts that organize: Delegation in the distributed organization.” Information and Organization 23:1–14. http://www.stuartgeiger.com/artifacts-that-organize.pdf

Using Edit Sessions to Measure Participation in Wikipedia

Published in Proceedings of CSCW, 2013

This paper establishes a quantitative metric for measuring editor activity through temporal edit sessions.

Recommended citation: Geiger, R. Stuart and Halfaker, Aaron. (2013). “Using Edit Sessions to Measure Participation in Wikipedia.” In Proceedings of the 2013 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2013). http://www.stuartgeiger.com/cscw-sessions.pdf

The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration Community: How Wikipedia’s reaction to sudden popularity is causing its decline

Published in American Behavioral Scientist, 2013

A mixed-method, multi-study analysis of editor retention, socialization, gatekeeping, and governance in Wikipedia.

Recommended citation: Halfaker, Aaron., R. Stuart Geiger, Jonathan Morgan, and John Riedl. (2013). “The Rise and Decline of an Open Collaboration System: How Wikipedia’s reaction to sudden popularity is killing it.” American Behavioral Scientist 57(5). http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0002764212469365

When the Levee Breaks: Without Bots, What Happens to Wikipedia’s Quality Control Processes?

Published in Proceedings of WikiSym, 2013

This paper examines what happened when one of Wikipedia's counter-vandalism bots unexpectedly went offline.

Recommended citation: Geiger, R. Stuart and Halfaker, Aaron. (2013). “When the Levee Breaks: Without Bots, What Happens to Wikipedia’s Quality Control Processes?” In Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration (WikiSym 2013). http://stuartgeiger.com/wikisym13-cluebot.pdf

The Next Generation of Scientists: Examining the Experiences of Graduate Students in Network-Level Social-Ecological Science

Published in Ecology and Society, 2013

We examined how graduate students experienced and social-ecological research initiative within the large-scale, geographically distributed Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network.

Recommended citation: Romolini, Michele., Sydne Record, Rebecca. Garvoille, Y. Marusenko, and R. Stuart Geiger. (2013) “The Next Generation of Scientists: Examining the Experiences of Graduate Students in Network-Level Science.” In Ecology and Society 18(3). http://stuartgeiger.com/lter-network-level-science-es.pdf

Bots, bespoke code, and the materiality of software platforms

Published in Information, Communication, and Society, 2014

This article introduces and discusses the role of bespoke code in Wikipedia, which is code that runs alongside a platform or system, rather than being integrated into server-side codebases.

Recommended citation: Geiger, R. Stuart. (2014). “Bots, Bespoke Code, and the Materiality of Software Platforms.” Information, Communication, and Society 17. http://stuartgeiger.com/bespoke-code-ics.pdf

Snuggle: Designing for efficient socialization and ideological critique

Published in Proceedings of CHI, 2014

This paper discusses the Snuggle project, built to support newcomer socialization and reflexive critique of Wikipedia's existing socialization processes.

Recommended citation: Halfaker, Aaron., Geiger, R. Stuart., and Treveen, Loren. (2014). “Snuggle: Designing for Efficient Socialization and Ideological Critique.” In Proceedings of the 2014 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI 2014). http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/Snuggle/halfaker14snuggle-personal.pdf

Old Against New, or a Coming of Age? Broadcasting in an Era of Electronic Media.

Published in Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 2014

On the history and continued relevance of the term "broadcasting" in an era of social media.

Recommended citation: Geiger, R. Stuart and Lampinen, Airi. (2014). “Old Against New, or a Coming of Age? Broadcasting in an Era of Electronic Media.” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 58(3). http://www.stuartgeiger.com/jobem.pdf

Defining, Designing, and Evaluating Civic Values in Human Computation and Collective Action Systems

Published in Proceedings of HCOMP, Citizen-X Workshop, 2014

We review various crowdsourcing and collective action systems, identifying particular sets of civic values and assumptions.

Recommended citation: Matias, N. and Geiger, R.S. “Defining, Designing, and Evaluating Civic Values in Human Computation and Collective Action Systems.” In Proceedings of HCOMP 2014, Citizen-X Workshop. http://stuartgeiger.com/defining-civic-values-hcomp-matias-geiger.pdf.

Bot-based collective blocklists in Twitter: the counterpublic moderation of harassment in a networked public space

Published in Information, Communication, and Society, 2016

This article introduces and discusses bot-based collective blocklists (or blockbots) in Twitter, which have been developed by volunteers to combat harassment in the social networking site in a more decentralized and counterpublic way than actions taken by Twitter, Inc. staff. I discuss how such forms of automation require that communities encode specific understandings of what harassment is and how to identify it, relating these cases to several longstanding issues around the governance and moderation of the public sphere.

Recommended citation: Geiger, R. Stuart. (2016). “Bot-based collective blocklists in Twitter: the counterpublic moderation of harassment in a networked public space.” Information, Communication, and Society 19(6). http://stuartgeiger.com/blockbots-ics.pdf

Summary Analysis of the 2017 GitHub Open Source Survey

Published in SocArxiv Preprints, 2017

This report is a high-level summary analysis of the 2017 GitHub Open Source Survey dataset, presenting frequency counts, proportions, and frequency or proportion bar plots for every question asked in the survey.

Recommended citation: R. Stuart Geiger. (2017). "Summary Analysis of the 2017 GitHub Open Source Survey." _SocArXiv Preprints._ doi: 10.17605/OSF.IO/ENRQ5

Operationalizing conflict and cooperation between automated software agents in Wikipedia: A replication and expansion of ‘Even Good Bots Fight’

Published in Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Compter Interaction, 2017

A mixed-method trace ethnographic analysis of issues around the governance of automated software agents in Wikipedia, focusing on how to interpret cases where bots reverted each other’s edits.

Recommended citation: R. Stuart Geiger and Aaron Halfaker. 2017. “Operationalizing conflict and cooperation between automated software agents in Wikipedia: A replication and expansion of Even Good Bots Fight." Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (Nov 2017 issue, CSCW 2018 Online First) 1, 2, Article 49. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3134684. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:conflict-bots-wp-cscw.pdf.

Beyond opening up the black box: Investigating the role of algorithmic systems in Wikipedian organizational culture

Published in Big Data & Society, 2017

Scholars and practitioners across domains are increasingly concerned with algorithmic transparency and opacity, interrogating the values and assumptions embedded in automated, black-boxed systems, particularly in user-generated content platforms. I report from an ethnography of infrastructure in Wikipedia to discuss an often understudied aspect of this topic: the local, contextual, learned expertise involved in participating in a highly automated social-technical environment.

Recommended citation: R. Stuart Geiger. (2017). "Beyond opening up the black box: Investigating the role of algorithmic systems in Wikipedian organizational culture." Big Data & Society 4(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951717730735

The Types, Roles, and Practices of Documentation in Data Analytics Open Source Software Libraries: A Collaborative Ethnography of Documentation Work

Published in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (JCSCW), 2018

Data analytics increasingly relies on open source software (OSS) libraries that extend scripted languages like python and R. Software documentation for these libraries is crucial for people across all experience levels, but documentation work raises many challenges, particularly in open source communities. In this collaboration between ethnographers and data scientists, we discuss the types, roles, practices, and motivations around documentation in data analytics OSS libraries.

Recommended citation: Geiger, R.S., Varoquaux, N., Mazel-Cabasse, C., and Holdgraf, C. (2018). ”The Types, Roles, and Practices of Documentation in Data Analytics Open Source Software Libraries: A Collaborative Ethnography of Documentation Work.” Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (JCSCW), 27(3). DOI:10.1007/s10606-018-9333-1 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10606-018-9333-1

Career Paths and Prospects in Academic Data Science: Report of the Moore-Sloan Data Science Environments Survey

Published:

This report of a survey of academic data scientists discusses what data science in the academy is, and various issues around the career paths for those in universities who practice and support data science. We provide evidence-based recommendations about how universities can better support an emerging set of roles and responsibilities around data and computation within and across academic fields.

Recommended citation: R. Stuart Geiger, Charlotte Mazel-Cabasse, Chihoko Cullens, Laura Noren, Brittany Fiore-Gartland, Diya Das, and Henry Brady (2018). _Career Paths and Prospects in Academic Data Science: Report of the Moore-Sloan Data Science Environments Survey._ Report. Berkeley, California: UC-Berkeley Institute for Data Science. https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/xe823/

ORES: Lowering Barriers with Participatory Machine Learning in Wikipedia

Published in Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (CSCW 2020), 2019

This paper presents an overview and case studies of ORES, Wikipedia’s real-time machine learning as a service platform, which is designed in line with Wikipedia’s values of open participation, decentralization, and continual iteration. ORES decouples and reduces incidental complexity around several aspects of applying machine learning in a user-generated content platform, including curating training data sets, building models to serve predictions, auditing predictions, and developing interfaces or automated agents that act on those predictions.

Garbage In, Garbage Out? Do Machine Learning Application Papers in Social Computing Report Where Human-Labeled Training Data Comes From?

Published in Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAT* 2020), 2019

Many machine learning projects for new application areas involve teams of humans who label data for a particular purpose, from hiring crowdworkers to the paper’s authors labeling the data themselves. In this paper, we investigate to what extent a sample of machine learning application papers in social computing – specifically papers from ArXiv and traditional publications performing an ML classification task on Twitter data – give specific details about whether best practices in human annotation were followed.

The Labor of Maintaining and Scaling Free and Open-Source Software Projects

Published in Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (CSCW 2021), 2021

We report findings from an interview-based study of maintainers of free and/or open-source software (F/OSS) projects. F/OSS maintainers perform complex and often-invisible interpersonal and organizational work to keep their projects operating as active communities of users and contributors. We particularly focus on how this labor of maintaining and sustaining changes as projects and their software grow and scale across many dimensions.

expressions

SHyNE (ESR 2022):

Interdisciplinary applications of deep learning and material science to develop new material being more resistant to corrosion of Hydrogen.

Analysis of document images

Analysis of document images based on superivsed/self-supervised, multimodal learning and multitask learning for document images classification and document attributes classification.

SEDUCTION (Project Idex)

Social affects discrimination using combined acoustic and visual information in the multicultural environment (Japanese/French).

talks

The Social Roles of Bots and Assisted Editing Tools

Published in International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration, 2009

A short paper showing the recent explosive growth of automated editors (or bots) in Wikipedia, which have taken on many new tasks in administrative spaces.

Trace Ethnography: Following Coordination through Documentary Practices

Published in Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2011

We detail the methodology of ‘trace ethnography’, which combines the richness of participant-observation with the wealth of data in logs so as to reconstruct patterns and practices of users in distributed sociotechnical systems

Actor-Network Theory

Published in Social Aspects of Information Systems course, 2013

An introduction to Actor Network Theory for students in the Masters of Information Management and Systems (MIMS) course

Size Matters: How Big Data Changes Everything

Published in Bangkok Scientifique, 2013

A talk introducing various concepts around large-scale data analysis to a general audience, including spam detection and governmental survellance.

Robotic Ethics and Opportunities

Published in Robots and New Media, 2014

A panel discussing the ethical and political issues that are raised with autonomous robots and software bots.

Governing the Commons

Published in History of Information, 2014

A lecture on the history of Wikipedia, in the broader context of the history of reference works.

Moderating Online Conversation Spaces

Published in Social Aspects of Information Systems course, 2015

An overview of how various online platforms moderate content, discussing issues that link up to the theories discussed in the Social Aspects of Information Systems class.

Peer Production and Wikipedia

Published in Social Aspects of Information Systems course, 2015

An overview of Wikipedia and other peer production platforms, discussing issues that link up to the theories discussed in the Social Aspects of Information Systems class.

The Bot Multiple: Unpacking the Materialities of Automated Software Agents

Published in Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Study of Science (4S), 2015

I examine the roles that automated software agents (or bots) play in the governance and moderation of Wikipedia, Twitter, and reddit – three online platforms that differently uphold a related set of commitments to ‘open’ and ‘public’ online participation.

Why bots are my favorite contribution to Wikipedia

Published in Wikipedia 15th Anniversary Birthday Bash, 2016

A short talk to open up an event celebrating the 15th anniversary of Wikipedia. The prompt we were given was "Why [x] is my favorite contribution to Wikipedia."

Scraping Wikipedia Data

Published in The Hacker Within, BIDS, 2016

A tutorial (with Jupyter notebooks) about how to use APIs to query structured data from Wikipedia articles and the Wikidata project.

Community Sustainability in Wikipedia: A Review of Research and Initiatives

Published in PyData SF, 2016

Wikipedia relies on one of the world’s largest open collaboration communities. Since 2001, the community has grown substantially and faced many challenges. This presentation reviews research and initiatives around community sustainability in Wikipedia that are relevant for many open source projects, including issues of newcomer retention, governance, automated moderation, and marginalized groups.

“The Wisdom of Bots:” An ethnographic study of the delegation of governance work to information infrastructures in Wikipedia

Published in Annual Meeting of the Society for the Social Study of Science (4S), 2016

Wikipedians rely on software agents to govern the ‘anyone can edit’ encyclopedia project, in the absence of more formal and traditional organizational structures. Lessons from Wikipedia’s bots speak to debates about how algorithms are being delegated governance work in sites of cultural production.

Demystifying Algorithmic Processes: The Case of Wikipedia

Published in The 21st Annual BCLT/BTLJ Symposium, 2017

This talk is part of a panel session titled “Demystifying Algorithmic Processes: What is the role of algorithms in online platforms, what can they do and not do, and how should they be governed?”

Jupyter and the Changing Rituals around Computation

Published in JupyterCon, 2017

We (Stuart Geiger, Brittany Fiore-Gartland, and Charlotte Cabasse-Mazel) share ethnographic findings made observing and working with Jupyter notebooks, focusing on how people use Jupyter to create and deliver computational narratives in particular local contexts, like classrooms, hackathons, research collaborations, and more.

Computational Ethnography and the Ethnography of Computation

Published in Berkeley Institute for Data Science, 2017

Ethnography is traditionally a qualitative and inductive methodology – with its origins in cultural anthropology – that is now widely used to holistically investigate people’s lived experiences in and across cultures. In this talk, I define and discuss two ways of thinking about the role of ethnographic methods around computation, then discuss how my research relates to both.

Are the bots really fighting? Behind the scenes of a reproducible replication

Published in UC-Berkeley Department of Statistics: Reproducible and Collaborative Data Science, 2017

A guest lecture for Fernando Perez’s STAT 159/259 course on Reproducible and Collaborative Data Science, in which I discuss issues of open science and reproducibility around our recent paper Operationalizing conflict and cooperation between automated software agents in Wikipedia: A replication and expansion of ‘Even Good Bots Fight’

“But it wouldn’t be an encyclopedia; it would be a wiki”: The changing imagined affordances of wikis, 1995-2002

Published in 2017 Annual Meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers, 2017

This paper examines the early history of “anyone can edit” wiki software – originally developed in 1995, six years before Wikipedia’s origin. While today, the idea of a wiki is associated with large-scale, massively-distributed encyclopedic knowledge production, this was not always the case. Articles on pre-Wikipedia wikis were often closer to a Joycean stream of consciousness than Wikipedia’s Britannica-inspired texts that speak in single voice, and the underlying wiki platform lacked many of the affordances that are now taken for granted in wiki platforms. In fact, the creator of the first wiki advised Wikipedia’s co-founders that the goals of creating a general-purpose encyclopedia and a wiki were inherently contradictory.

The Humanity of Artificial Intelligence

Published in Bay Area Science Festival, 2017

Today, “artificial intelligence” seems to be everywhere – in our phones, vacuums, hospitals, and inboxes – but it can be hard to separate science fiction from science fact. Many discussions about AI imagine a fully autonomous superintelligence that designs itself with little to no human intervention, making decisions in ways that humans cannot possibly understand. Yet the work of designing, developing, engineering, training, and testing such systems requires a massive amount of human labor, which is typically erased when such systems are released as products. In this talk, I give a human-centered, behind-the-scenes introduction to machine learning, illustrating the creative, interpretive, and often messy work humans do to make autonomous agents work. Understanding the humanity behind artificial intelligence is important if we want to think constructively about issues of bias, fairness, accountability, and transparency in AI.

Computational Ethnography and the Ethnography of Computation: The Case for Context

Published in School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2018

Ethnography is traditionally a qualitative and inductive methodology that is now widely used to holistically investigate people’s lived experiences in and across cultures. In this talk, I define and discuss two ways of thinking about the role of ethnographic methods around computation, then discuss how my research relates to both.

Computational Ethnography and the Ethnography of Computation: The Case for Context

Published in School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2018

Ethnography is traditionally a qualitative and inductive methodology that is now widely used to holistically investigate people’s lived experiences in and across cultures. In this talk, I define and discuss two ways of thinking about the role of ethnographic methods around computation, then discuss how my research relates to both.

Computational Ethnography and the Ethnography of Computation: The Case for Context

Published in College of Information Studies, University of Maryland at College Park, 2018

Ethnography is traditionally a qualitative and inductive methodology that is now widely used to holistically investigate people’s lived experiences in and across cultures. In this talk, I define and discuss two ways of thinking about the role of ethnographic methods around computation, then discuss how my research relates to both.

Publics: Witnessing and Measuring

Published in UC-Berkeley: Human Contexts and Ethics of Data course, 2018

A guest lecture for Cathryn Carson and Margo Boenig-Liptsin’s course on Human Contexts and Ethics of Data (HIST 182C, STS 100C), focusing on how various publics generate, analyze, and interpret data.

The Human Contexts of Data: Infrastructures, Institutions, and Interpretations

Published in University of Manchester, Data Science Institute, 2018

In this talk, I discuss the role of qualitative and ethnographic methods in relation to computer, information, and data science. These holistic, reflexive, and meta-level approaches to studying data and computation in context help us better understand how to both support and practice data analytics at various scales.

Computational Ethnography and the Ethnography of Computation: The Case for Context

Published in IT University of Copenhagen, ETHOSlab, 2018

Ethnography is traditionally a qualitative and inductive methodology that is now widely used to holistically investigate people’s lived experiences in and across cultures. In this talk, I define and discuss two ways of thinking about the role of ethnographic methods around computation, then discuss how my research relates to both.

Key Values: What We Talk About When We Talk About ‘Open Science’

Published in Open Science Symposium, Department of Second Language Studies, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, 2018

Openness in science is hard to disagree with as an abstract principle, but what exactly do we mean when we call for science to be made open – or more open than before? In this talk, I introduce and unpack the many different goals, strategies, products, values, and assumptions of the broad open science movement.

The Human Contexts of Computation and Data: Infrastructures, Institutions, and Interpretations

Published in University of California at San Diego, The Design Lab, 2018

In this talk, I discuss the role of qualitative and ethnographic methods in relation to computer, information, and data science. These holistic, reflexive, and meta-level approaches to studying data and computation in context help us better understand how to both support and practice data analytics at various scales.

Knowing User Populations at Scale: From the Science of the State to Platform Governmentality

Published in 2018 Annual Conference of the International Communication Association, 2018

How can institutions that own and operate large-scale social media platforms come to know “their users” at scale? In this talk, I discuss ways of knowing user populations at scale, drawing on Foucault’s account of governmentality, particularly the role of statistics in the formation of the modern nation state.

The Types, Roles, and Practices of Documentation in Data Analytics Open Source Software Libraries: A Collaborative Ethnography of Documentation Work

Published in 2018 European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, 2018

Data analytics increasingly relies on open source software (OSS) libraries that extend scripted languages like python and R. Software documentation for these libraries is crucial for people across all experience levels, but documentation work raises many challenges, particularly in open source communities. In this collaboration between ethnographers and data scientists, we discuss the types, roles, practices, and motivations around documentation in data analytics OSS libraries.

Designing and Using Data Science Ethically

Published in Machine Learning and User Experience San Francisco (MLUXSF), 2018

With the rise of Machine Learning and AI to solve human-focused needs, how do we design and use data science ethically to help empower and support people?

Ethics and Policy Implications of Big Data

Published in University of California, San Diego, 2019

Panelist on the ‘Knowledge and Culture’ panel at this workshop on algorithms and big data, sponsored by a number of different departments across UCSD.

Garbage In, Garbage Out? Do Machine Learning Application Papers in Social Computing Report Where Human-Labeled Training Data Comes From?

Published in ACM FAT* 2020, 2020

Many machine learning projects for new application areas involve teams of humans who label data for a particular purpose, from hiring crowdworkers to the paper’s authors labeling the data themselves. Such a task is quite similar to (or a form of) structured content analysis, which is a longstanding methodology in the social sciences and humanities, with many established best practices. In this paper, we investigate to what extent a sample of machine learning application papers in social computing — specifically papers from ArXiv and traditional publications performing an ML classification task on Twitter data — give specific details about whether such best practices were followed.

teaching

CCTP-783: Qualitative Data Analysis (Fall 2009)

Published:

Graduate course, Teaching assistant
CCTP-783 is a core methods course for the CCT program, one of multiple classes M.A. students can take to satisfy their core methods requirement.

INFO-103: History of Information (Spring 2014)

Published:

Undergraduate course, Teaching assistant
INFO 103 is an elective undergraduate course in the UC-Berkeley School of Information, crosslisted with History, Media Studies, and Cognitive Science.

Software Carpentry Instructor

Published:

Software Carpentry is a global non-profit organization that provides free, short workshops on scientific computing and data science. I have been a certified instructor with SWC since May 2016.

Peer Learning Group Coordinator

Published:

Since Fall 2016, I have been the lead coordinator for The Hacker Within, a weekly peer learning group for scientific computing and data science, which is run out of the Berkeley Institute for Data Science.