E-petitioning has become one of the most important and popular forms of online activism. Although e-petition success is driven by user behavior, users have received relatively little study by e-petition researchers. Drawing from theoretical and empirical work in analogous social computing systems, we identify two potentially competing theories about the trajectories of users in e-petition platforms: (1) "power" users in social computing systems are born, not made; and (2) users mature into "power" user roles. In a quantitative analysis of data from Change.org, one of the largest online e-petition platforms, we test and find support for both theories. A follow-up qualitative analysis shows that not only do users learn from their experience, systems also "learn" from users to make better recommendations. In this sense, we find that although power users are "born," they are also "made" through both processes of personal growth and improved support from the system.

No abstract

The process of settling in a new country can be extremely challenging, entailing various information needs to cope with rapid changes and adjustments to a new environment. Through interviews with 16 Korean immigrants in the United States, we explored their information behaviors in the settlement process. In line with prior work (Shoham & Strauss, 2008), we found that Korean immigrants needed various types of information: housing, work, banking, transportation, law, school, health, and language. Out of these information types, the Korean immigrants prioritized information for education and struggled to seek health and legal information. We further uncovered that various information needs are closely intertwined and found an additional type of information need: to build a new social network after migration. They often used Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) as information sources while adapting the ICT infrastructures of the U.S. into their information practices. ICTs enabled them to build and maintain “local” and “global” identity; however, they may struggle to assess user‐generated content in the new context. We noted that their strong use of ICTs for intraethnic interaction might slow down their integration into the host society. We discuss implications for future work to support immigrants' settlement in the host country.

Mobile videochat use has been growing, especially for teens. To better understand teens' videochat practices, we conducted a two-week photo diary study with 16 teens. We found that most often, teens videochat with their closest friends from their bedrooms when they feel lonely or bored. Teens turned to videochat when understimulated but also felt understimulated during videochat. In order to manage this, they multitasked -teens moved from active chatting to co-presence while engaged in separate activities like scrolling social feeds or playing games. We uncovered social norms of reciprocity of attention, where teens match the attention level of the other and give leeway to briefly divert attention. Digital notifications did not feel disruptive to the videochat but family members' interruptions felt disruptive as teens' domestic context intruded into their virtual peer setting. We discuss these findings and their implications for research and design of videochat systems.

Although Collaborative Information-Seeking (CIS) is becoming prevalent as people engage in shared decision-making, interface components adopted in the most commonly used information seeking tools (e.g., search, filter, select, and sort) are designed for individual use. To deepen our understanding of (1) how such single-user designs affect people's consensus building processes in CIS and (2) how to devise an alternative design to improve current practices, we conducted two 4-week diary studies and observed how groups seek out places together. Our studies focus on social event coordination as a case where CIS is necessary and important. In Study 1, we examined the major challenges people encounter when performing CIS using their preferred tools. These challenges include difficulties in capturing mutual preferences, high communication cost, and disparity of work depending on a group member's perceived role as an organizer or invitee. We discovered that improving a group's shared understanding of the target information they seek (e.g., places, products) could potentially address the challenges. In Study 2, we designed, deployed, and evaluated ComeTogether, a novel system that supports a group's social event coordination. ComeTogether adopts Collaborative Dynamic Queries (C-DQ), an interface designed to allow a group to share their preferences regarding potential destinations. Study 2 results indicate that using C-DQ increased users' awareness of other group members' preferences in performing CIS, making their coordination more transparent, more inviting, and fairer than what their current practice allows. Meanwhile, ComeTogether improved communication efficiency of groups while presenting opportunities to learn about others and to discover new places. We provide implications for design that explain considerations for adopting C-DQ and identify future research directions.