Awards
Associate Professor Andrea Stevenson Won, with A. H.-C., received an honorable mention for a paper to be presented at the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Entitled “The Sound of Support: The Presence of Gendered Voice Agent as Support to Minority Teammates in Gender-Imbalanced Teams,” the paper explores the potential of leveraging a teamwork agent’s identity—signaled through its gendered voice—to support marginalized individuals in gender-imbalanced teams. In a mixed design experiment, participants were randomly assigned to work with a female and a male voice agent in either a female-dominated or male-dominated team. Results show the presence of a same-gender voice agent is particularly beneficial to the performance of marginalized female members, such that they would contribute more ideas and talk more when a female agent was present. Conversely, marginalized male members became more talkative but were less focused on the teamwork tasks at hand when working with a male-sounding agent. The findings of the experiment support existing literature on the effect of social presence in gender-imbalanced teams, such that gendered agents serve similar benefits as human teammates of the same gender identities. However, the effect of agents’ presence remains limited when participants have experienced severe marginalization in the past. In their conference presentation, the authors will discuss relevant design implications and avenues for future research.
Events
Join us for the ICA Preview Talks on Friday, May 3, 2024, at 1:00 pm in 102 Mann Library Building. Graduate students Tianen Chen, Ria Gualano, and Pengfei Zhao are presenting. The event is followed by a reception, located in The Hub of the Department of Communication.
Lecturer Cat Lambert is exhibiting an original artwork in the Community Nostalgia Initiative’s exhibition “The Ratatouille Moment.” The event, which takes place at the Big Red Barn, opens with a reception on Wednesday, May 1, 2024, 7:00–9:00 pm. The exhibition explores the experience of food, memory, and nostalgia. (See picture below.)
Multi-Media Event
On April 22, 2024, Associate Professor Andrea Stevenson Won hosted a screening of Ancestral Gratitude Bridge: Indigenous Community Connection through Virtual Embodiment and Technological Storytelling, a film by Táhila Moss. The event took place in two locations—and in two modes! The film was screened at The Soil Factory and in the Virtual Embodiment Lab, both on a screen and in virtual reality. Following the screening, a conversation with the filmmaker took place over zoom. (See picture below.)
Publications
Assistant Professor Monica Cornejo (with J. Kam, D. Arch, and A. Salehuddin), February 2024, “Using Resilience Theory to Examine Undocumented Students’ “Know Your Rights” Family Communication,” Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority. Many U.S. college campuses, community organizations, and social media users have offered “Know Your Rights” workshops or distributed “Know Your Rights” red cards to inform undocumented immigrants of their rights, should they be approached by the police or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The study results revealed that family discussions about such rights are related to greater undocumented students’ knowledge of how to keep themselves and their family safe, and over time, such communication can be associated with greater feelings of safety. Nevertheless, family discussions of their rights, should they be approached by the police or ICE, can also be associated with higher levels of anxiety over time.
N. Valle; graduate student Pengfei Zhao; D. Freed; K. Gorton; A. Chapman; graduate student and Head of Instruction & Research Initiatives, Cornell Library, Ashley Shea; Professor Natalie Bazarova, April 2024, “Towards a Critical Framework of Social Media Literacy: A Systematic Literature Review,” Review of Educational Research. Led by the former Social Media Lab (SML) Postdoctoral Associate Natercia Valle and co-authored by several members of SML Team, including two undergraduate students (Katie Gorton and Andie Chapman), this article presents a new framework of critical social media literacy (CSML). Drawing on the critical literacy and affordances-in-practice frameworks, we explore the framework of CSML through a systematic literature review to determine whether and how its components—users’ goals, use context, inquiry, reflection, and action—have been addressed in the literature. Twenty of the 50 publications identified reflected all the components of the CSML framework at different levels. The authors focused on empirical studies to identify instructional approaches and recommendations to support the development of CSML skills. Implications for research and practice, including curriculum connections, are also discussed.
