Rethinking UX requires mapping trends in empirical research to find out how the field has developed. This study addresses that need by analyzing over 400 academic empirical studies published between 2000--2016. Our research questions are, "How have the artifacts, analysis, and methods of UX research changed since the year 2000?" and "Do scholars use research questions and hypotheses to ground their research in UX?" Our research found that services, websites, and imagined objects/prototypes were among the most frequently studied artifacts, while usability studies, surveys, and interviews were the most commonly used methods. We found a significant increase in quantitative and mixed methods studies since 2010. This study showed that only 1 out of every 5 publications employed research questions to guide inquiry. We hope that these findings help UX as a field more accurately and broadly conceive of its identity with clear standards for evaluating existing research and rethinking future research opportunities as a discipline.

The COVID-19 infodemic is driven partially by Twitter bots. Flagging bot accounts and the misinformation they share could provide one strategy for preventing the spread of false information online. This article reports on an experiment ( N = 299) conducted with participants in the USA to see whether flagging tweets as coming from bot accounts and as containing misinformation can lower participants’ self-reported engagement and attitudes about the tweets. This experiment also showed participants tweets that aligned with their previously held beliefs to determine how flags affect their overall opinions. Results showed that flagging tweets lowered participants’ attitudes about them, though this effect was less pronounced in participants who frequently used social media or consumed more news, especially from Facebook or Fox News. Some participants also changed their opinions after seeing the flagged tweets. The results suggest that social media companies can flag suspicious or inaccurate content as a way to fight misinformation. Flagging could be built into future automated fact-checking systems and other misinformation abatement strategies of the social network analysis and mining community.

This article argues that #MeToo posts are transgressive and can be understood as a case of confessional discourse that has the potential to empower women around the world rather than inspiring shame. Due to its public nature, #MeToo also challenges existing frameworks for understanding sexual relationships in the United States. This critical discourse analysis of the response to the #MeToo movement over 9 months (2017–2018) on the Reddit community AskReddit surfaced fears about how the movement is redefining normal sexual behavior. By inventorying the knowledge claims produced across four question and answer comment threads, important shifts in subject positions and discursive frames show that under the guise of inclusive rhetoric and expert discourse, many Reddit respondents fear their past behavior will be reconstituted as abusive. Rape myths also appeared in the discourse as a backlash against the #MeToo movement.

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User experience (UX) researchers in technical communication (TC) and beyond still need a clear picture of the methods used to measure and evaluate UX. This article charts current UX methods through a systematic literature review of recent publications (2016–2018) and a survey of 52 UX practitioners in academia and industry. Our results indicate that contemporary UX research favors mixed methods, and that usability testing is especially popular in both published research and our survey results. This article presents these findings as a snapshot of contemporary research methods for UX.