By Joseph Schafer, HCDE PhD student
August 2023
I had a fantastic time attending ACM DIS 2023. First, on a personal level, this was my first time traveling solo, visiting anywhere near that part of the country [the closest I’d been to Pittsburgh previously was Denver, Colorado], and my first air travel anywhere since the pandemic. Getting funding to go to this conference allowed me to expand both my literal and metaphorical horizons, and I am so grateful for that opportunity.
The conference itself was incredibly enriching. Alongside working as a student volunteer for the conference, I was honored to present two works: First, I presented a workshop paper written with 3 undergraduate DRG students and my advisor, Professor Kate Starbird, on understanding online virality through the lens of the contextual integrity framework from privacy law. Second, I presented a full conference paper that I wrote with Professor Daniela K. Rosner and Professor Kate Starbird, on speculative design to imagine how to ethically do participatory design research into misinformation, disinformation, and online hate. Both presentations were well-received, and I am grateful to the HCDE student travel fund for enabling me to share this work with the broader community.
The conference was extremely rewarding and has inspired future work as well. As a direct result of my attending the conference, I am starting a new research project in collaboration with a fellow student volunteer (from Penn State at the time, currently at Georgia Tech) and two other HCDE PhD students. I also met another PhD student from the University of Delaware who is working on similar research topics to my own work, and we have been staying in contact to think about future collaborative projects. Beyond direct collaborations, I was also able to meet a much larger network of PhD students and faculty members from a wide array of institutions, and learn about research across several diverse areas ranging from closely intersecting with my own interests to ranging extremely far. Understanding the directions this community is currently exploring was quite enlightening, and I hope to attend future iterations of this conference.
I am incredibly grateful to the HCDE Student Travel Fund for enabling this experience.
Give to support HCDE student travel
The Mary B. Coney Endowed Fund, named in honor of Emeritus Professor Mary Coney, supports HCDE students by funding costs associated with travel to conferences and international workshops. Your support of this fund enriches the HCDE student experience and enhances HCDE's influence in the field.