Constructing the Visual Online Political Self: An Analysis of Instagram Use
by the Scottish Electorate
Politics on Social Media
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Mahoney, Jamie
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Feltwell, Tom
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Ajuruchi, Obinna
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Lawson, Shaun
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'16 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2016-05-07
v.1
p.3339-3351
© Copyright 2016 ACM
Summary: This paper presents an investigation of how the Scottish electorate utilised
photo-sharing on social media as a means of participation in the democratic
process and for political self-expression in the periods immediately prior to
two recent major democratic votes: the 2014 Scottish independence referendum,
and the 2015 UK general election. We extend previous HCI literature on the
growing use of social media in a political context and contribute specifically
on understanding the emergent use of visual media by citizens when engaging
with political issues and democratic process. Through a qualitative analysis of
images shared on the platform Instagram, we demonstrate that the Scottish
electorate did indeed used image-sharing for political self-expression --
posting a variety of visual content, representative of a diversity of political
opinion. We conclude that users utilised Instagram as a platform to craft and
present their "political selves". We raise questions for future research around
power and inequality on such platforms as well as their capability of providing
a persistent forum for debate.
Dendrogram Visualization as a Game Design Tool
Works in Progress
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Feltwell, Tom
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Cielniak, Grzegorz
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Dickinson, Patrick
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Kirman, Ben J.
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Lawson, Shaun
Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGCHI Annual Symposium on Computer-Human
Interaction in Play
2015-10-05
p.505-510
© Copyright 2015 ACM
Summary: With the advent of game telemetry, contemporary game designers have access
to a huge amount of real-time data about player behavior. However, in design
practice there is a lack of effective visualization tools. Activity histograms
or heatmaps can suffer from data overcrowding, making it difficult for the
designer to identify patterns and outliers within a large dataset. This
work-in-progress explores a new meta-visualization tool for game designers that
uses dendrogram representations to highlight pertinent features within large
sets of heatmaps. Through interviews with professional game designers, we find
that dendrograms can be used to identify outliers quickly, and are valuable in
guiding designers through complex telemetry. This contributes to the ongoing
work on supporting richer tools for game design practice amongst an
increasingly data-filled environment.
"Aye, have a dream #IndyRef": use of Instagram during the Scottish
referendum
Work-in-progress (posters)
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Feltwell, Tom
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Mahoney, Jamie
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Lawson, Shaun
Proceedings of the 2015 British Human Computer Interaction Conference
2015-07-13
p.267-268
© Copyright 2015 Authors
Summary: In this paper we investigate the use of Instagram by citizens engaged with
the Scottish Independence Referendum 2014. Using qualitative analysis, we
explore the themes that were evident in the images that Instagram users posted
in the run up to the vote and highlight the importance of future work in
understanding the use of imagery in social media during political campaigns.
Problematising Upstream Technology through Speculative Design: The Case of
Quantified Cats and Dogs
Quantified Self for Humans & Pets
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Lawson, Shaun
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Kirman, Ben
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Linehan, Conor
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Feltwell, Tom
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Hopkins, Lisa
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'15 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2015-04-18
v.1
p.2663-2672
© Copyright 2015 ACM
Summary: There is growing interest in technology that quantifies aspects of our
lives. This paper draws on critical practice and speculative design to explore,
question and problematise the ultimate consequences of such technology using
the quantification of companion animals (pets) as a case study. We apply the
concept of "moving upstream" to study such technology and use a qualitative
research approach in which both pet owners, and animal behavioural experts,
were presented with, and asked to discuss, speculative designs for pet
quantification applications, the design of which were extrapolated from
contemporary trends. Our findings indicate a strong desire among pet owners for
technology that has little scientific justification, whilst our experts caution
that the use of technology to augment human-animal communication has the
potential to disimprove animal welfare, undermine human-animal bonds, and
create human-human conflicts. Our discussion informs wider debates regarding
quantification technology.
Debating Poverty Porn on Twitter: Social Media as a Place for Everyday
Socio-Political Talk
Socio-Political Interactions
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Brooker, Phil
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Vines, John
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Sutton, Selina
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Barnett, Julie
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Feltwell, Tom
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Lawson, Shaun
Proceedings of the ACM CHI'15 Conference on Human Factors in Computing
Systems
2015-04-18
v.1
p.3177-3186
© Copyright 2015 ACM
Summary: This paper presents an empirical investigation of how people appropriated
Twitter for socio-political talk in response to a television (TV) portrayal of
people supported by state welfare and benefits. Our findings reveal how online
discussion during, and in-between, TV broadcasts was characterised by
distinctly different qualities, topics and user behaviours. These findings
offer design opportunities for social media services to (i) support more
balanced real-time commentaries of politically-charged media, (ii) actively
promote discussion to continue after, and between, programming; and (iii)
incorporate different motivations and attitudes towards socio-political
concerns, as well as different practices of communicating those concerns. We
contribute to the developing HCI literature on how social media intersects with
political and civic engagement and specifically highlight the ways in which
Twitter interacts with other forms of media as a site of everyday
socio-political talk and debate.
