Ingrid Erickson

Digital literacy and informal learning environments: an introduction

New technologies and developments in media are transforming the way that individuals, groups and societies communicate, learn, work and govern. This new socio-technical reality requires participants to possess not only skills and abilities related to the use of technological tools, but also knowledge regarding the norms and practices of appropriate usage. To be ‘digitally literate’ in this way encompasses issues of cognitive authority, safety and privacy, creative, ethical, and responsible use and reuse of digital media, among other topics. A lack of digital literacy increasingly implicates ones full potential of being a competent student, an empowered employee or an engaged citizen. Digital literacy is often considered a school-based competency, but it is introduced and developed in informal learning contexts such as libraries, museums, social groups, affinity spaces online, not to mention the home environment. This article recognizes and connects the ways and places we might conceptualize and realize an expanded view of digital literacy that fits todays changing reality.

The Heart Work of Wikipedia: Gendered, Emotional Labor in the World's Largest Online Encyclopedia

This note explores the issue of womens participation in Wikipedia through the lens of emotional labor. Using a grounded theory approach, we detail the kinds of tasks women Wikipedians choose to do and explore why they choose the work they do. We also explore the emotional costs of their labor and their strategies for coping. Our analysis of 20 interviews leads us to posit that the gendered and emotional labor required of many women to participate in Wikipedias production renders it, problematically, a space of conflicting public and private spheres, motivated by antithetical open and closed values. In addition to other contributions, we believe this insight sheds light on some of the complex dynamics behind Wikipedias observed gender gap.

Making cultures: building things & building communities

Cultures of making, customization and repair have gained recent visibility within the CSCW literature due to the alternative framings of design and use they present. This panel brings together scholars across human-computer interaction, interaction design, information studies, and science and technology studies to examine the forms of social organization and technological production that come from maker and repair collectives.

Designing collaboration: comparing cases exploring cultural probes as boundary-negotiating objects

This paper examines the use of cultural probes as a method for fostering collaboration within groups of diverse experts working on creative projects. Using two case examples, we show that probes -- short, oblique, and at times whimsical sets of activity prompts - have boundary object properties that can jumpstart interdisciplinary and cross-functional exchange. The first case explores how social scientists and designers used a smartphone-based scavenger hunt activity to gather insights for a workshop on organizational innovation. The second case examines how artist/scientist pairs utilized probe-like prompts to develop short performances for an arts festival. Drawing together theoretical views on boundary objects and cultural probes, we suggest that designed experiences such as probes can create opportunities for both boundary work and the establishment of common ground, which is increasingly vital in the highly collaborative contexts that define work today.

Feminism and social media research

CSCW has begun to publish feminist studies and to host panels that specifically address feminist issues such as gender in peer production. Building on these renewed interests on gender and social computing, we present a workshop on feminist approaches to social media research. The goals of our workshop are to identify ways to improve social media research by leveraging feminist approaches and to provide an opportunity for researchers to reflect on their practices in order to learn from one another.

Circumscribed Time and Porous Time: Logics as a Way of Studying Temporality

In this paper, we introduce the notion of a temporal logic to characterize sets of organizing principles that perpetuate particular orientations to the lived experience of time. We identify a dominant temporal logic, circumscribed time, which has legitimated time as chunkable, single-purpose, linear, and ownable. We juxtapose this logic with the temporal experiences of participants in three ethnographic datasets to identify a set of alternative understandings of time -- that it is also spectral, mosaic, rhythmic, and obligated. We call this understanding porous time. We posit porous time as an expansion of circumscribed time in order to provoke reflection on how temporal logics underpin the ways that people orient to each other, research and design technologies, and normalize visions of success in contemporary life.

Feminism and Feminist Approaches in Social Computing

Following on the successful CSCW 2014 workshop on Feminism and Social Media, this workshop will bring together a set of CSCW scholars to discuss feminist perspectives in social computing and technology. We will explore theoretical and methodological approaches to the topic and draw on literature and empirical studies to build a set of generative and creative dialogues around the topics of diversity, sexual orientation, cultural attitudes, sociopolitical affiliations, and other emergent themes. Conversations will be directed particularly toward the challenges of using a feminist approach in CSCW scholarship, identifying both productive and problematic research practices. This session promises to open new feminist dialogues about current issues in CSCW from sexuality and identity on social media, labor and technology development, and gender inequality within Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math + Arts and Design (STEAM) collaborative efforts, and other emergent areas of interest.

Revealing mutually constitutive ties between the information and learning sciences

People interact with technology, information, and each other much differently than they did a decade ago and, in some ways, even a year ago. Indeed, these claims are no longer new, nor undocumented...

On the production of the spirit of feminism

3 6 I N T E R A C T I O N S S E P T E M B E R – O C T O B E R 2 016 This piece is no exception. Yet the tale we tell here is not another report of inequalities uncovered. Instead, it is a story of an awakening, a story that takes place within an already feministidentified group about how we came to a different way of thinking. This transformation took place in a series of workshops on feminism and social media at the Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) conferences in 2014 and 2015. In putting ideals into practice in these events, we as organizers gained insight into what the word feminist means to us and what we think it can mean more globally within the tech communities of which we are a part. References to feminism in our community are usually triggered by the appearance of something controversial or seemingly atypical, like sexism in the comments section of a site. Feminism also gets invoked when recognizing the inequities between male and “Other-ed” developers, or when acknowledging the asymmetries intrinsic in modern realities such as algorithmic culture. Here, the moniker feminist is pointedly used to distinguish something from the mainstream, from the “normal” way of doing things. It also immediately charges what is to come with an alternative set of logics and values. On the Production of the Spirit of Feminism Ingrid Erickson, Rutgers University Libby Hemphill, Illinois Institute of Technology Amanda Menking, University of Washington Stephanie Steinhardt, Cornell University

The ethos and pragmatics of data sharing

The focus of this panel is the pragmatics of data sharing as framed by the needs and pressures of scholarly work. Panelists represent a lively blend of quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods researchers with recent experiences in developing and sharing data. Panelists will present research and address questions related to data collection and management, human subjects protocols, data archival and data repositories and other emergent issues.