I research the antecedents and social and psychological consequences of computer-mediated communication in social media and virtual worlds. I am particularly interested in how people provide different types of social support (e.g., emotional, informational, and financial support) via social media. I focus on a research paradigm that I call ‘computer-integrated communication. This paradigm views computers not as a neutral mediator of communication, but one where the technology plays an active part in the communication process and outcomes, such as how design and algorithms can influence people’s perceptions and behavior.

I am a mixed-methods person using both qualitative (e.g., interviews, focus groups, ethnography) and quantitative methods (e.g., surveys, experiments, big data analysis, content analysis, modeling) to answer my research questions.

MAIN PROJECTS (and select publication examples)

Content Moderation in Social Media

Supported by the National Science Foundation and Mozilla Foundation, our work focuses on the work of volunteer moderators in live streaming communities and understanding how safe spaces develop online.

• Cai, J., & Wohn, D. J. (2023). Understanding Moderators’ Conflict and Conflict Management Strategies with Streamers in Live Streaming Communities. Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, No. 669, 1-12
• Cai, J., Wohn, D. Y., & Almoqbel, M. (2021). Moderation visibility: Mapping the strategies of volunteer moderation in live streaming micro communities. In Proceedings of ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences (IMX), 61-72. [pdf]
• Cook, C. L., Patel, A., Wohn, D. Y. (2021). Commercial versus volunteer: Comparing user perceptions of toxicity and transparency in content moderation across social media platforms. Frontiers in Human Dynamics, 3 [pdf]
• Wohn, D. Y. (2019). Volunteer Moderators in Twitch Micro Communities: How they Get Involved, the Roles they Play, and the Emotional Labor they Experience. In Proceedings of 2019 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’19) [pdf]

Digital Patronage

Digital patronage, a term coined by Dr. Wohn, refers to how fans/supporters support content creators both financially and emotionally through new social media platforms.

• Bonifacio, R., Hair, L., & Wohn, D. Y. (2021). Beyond Fans: The Relational Labor and Communication Practices of Creators on Patreon. New Media and Society [pdf]
  
• Bonifacio, R., & Wohn, D. Y. (2020). Digital Patronage Platforms. In Companion Publication of the 2020 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 221-226 [pdf]
• Wohn, D. Y., Freeman, G., & McLaughlin, C. (2018). Explaining Viewers’ Emotional, Instrumental, and Financial Support Provision for Live Streamers. In Proceedings of CHI, no. 474, New York, NY: ACM [PDF]

Games & eSports

Live streaming and esports are relatively new cultural trends that are recreational activities that require high technology specifications. Current projects are aimed at understanding more about people’s behaviors in these environments with the aim of developing better systems, such as 1) Understanding virtual currency/ economies  2) Relationships between streamers and viewers, and 3) virtual collaboration/teamwork.

• Li, L., Freeman, G., & Wohn, D. Y. (2021). The Interplay of Financial Exchanges and Offline Interpersonal Relationships through Digital Peer-to-Peer Payments. Telematics and Informatics [pdf]
• Mittal, A., & Wohn, D. Y. (2019). Charity Streaming: Why Charity Organizations Use Live Streams for Fundraising. Proceedings of ACM CHIPLAY Extended abstraca551-556. [pdf]
• Wohn, D. Y., & Freeman, G. (2019). Live Streaming, Playing, and Money Spending Behaviors in eSports. Games and Culture
• Wohn, D. Y., Freeman, G., & McLaughlin, C. (2018). Explaining Viewers’ Emotional, Instrumental, and Financial Support Provision for Live Streamers. In Proceedings of CHI, no. 474, New York, NY: ACM [PDF]
• Cai, J., Wohn, D. Y., Mittal, A., & Sureshbabu, D. (2018). Utilitarian and Hedonic Motivations for Live Streaming Shopping. In Proceedings of ACM Conference on Interactive Experiences for Television and Online Video (TVX), pp.81-88. New York, NY: ACM [PDF]

Technology and Health / Psychological well-being

This research investigates the relationship between psychological well-being and technology usage, especially how social media can play a role in facilitating social support. I have a grant from the Mozilla Foundation to study harassment of female and LGBT live streamers and two NSF grants that examine the content moderation practices of live streaming micro communities to understand how positive norms develop online. Future plans include the development of a system that will augment spaces based on people’s wellness data for small, windowless spaces.

• Uttarapong, J., Cai, J., & Wohn, D. Y. (2021). Harassment Experiences of Women and LGBTQ Live Streamers and How They Handled Negativity. In Proceedings of ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences (IMX), 7-19 [pdf]
• Uttarapong, .J., LaMastra, N., Gandhi, R., Lee, Y-H., Yuan, C. W., Wohn, D. Y. (2022). Twitch Users’ Motivations and Practices During Community Mental Health Discussions In Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Volume 6, Issue GROUP, January 2022 Article No. 5, pp. 1–23
• Wohn, D. Y., Kum-Biocca, H. H., Sharma, A., & Khandakar, A. (2020). A room with a “fake” view: Installing digital windows in windowless offices. In Proceedings of IMX ’20: ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences, 180-184. [pdf]

Self Presentation in Social Media

In social network sites such as Facebook, others sometimes post content of oneself that is inconsistent with one’s self-image. People react in different ways to face-threatening content about them that was posted by others on Facebook. We examine factors that are associated with one’s likelihood of using a particular reactive strategy and the relational consequences that these reactions have.

• Wohn, D. Y., Yuan, C. W., Siri, J. S. (2021). The Many Facets of Me: Multiple Account Management on Reddit. In Proceedings of HICSS, 3057-3066 [pdf]
• Spottswood, E., & Wohn, D. Y. (2019). Beyond the “Like”: How people respond to negative posts on Facebook. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media [pre-print pdf]
• Wohn, D. Y., & Freeman, G. (2020). Audience Management Practices of Live Streamers on Twitch. In Proceedings of IMX ’20: ACM International Conference on Interactive Media Experiences, 106-116 [pdf]

News Consumption in the Age of Social Media

Crystallization is a network model of information flow and reality formation. This model incorporates network theory into the traditional agenda-setting theory and proposes that members of one’s social networks become “neo agenda setters.” We are also doing empirical work on how people consume news through mobile social media and how it influences their political engagement.

• Almoqbel, M., Vanzyl, J., Keaton, M., Desai, M., Padhi, S., Min, S.J., Wohn, D.Y. (2023). Perceptions of accuracy in online news during the COVID-19 pandemic. First Monday
• Min, S. J., & Wohn, D. Y. (2018). All the News that You Don’t Like: Cross-cutting Exposure and Political Participation in the Age of Social Media. Computers in Human Behavior, 83, 24-31 [PDF]
• Wohn, D. Y., & Bowe, B. J. (2016). Micro Agenda Setters: The Effect of Social Media on Young Adults’ Exposure to and Attitude Toward News. Social Media and Society, 2(1)
• Wohn, D. Y., & Bowe, B. J. (2014). How social media facilitates social construction of reality. In Proceedings of companion publication of CSCW 2014, 261-264. New York, NY: ACM

PAST PROJECTS

Media habits

Most media studies focus on people’s intentions and conscious motivations, but what happens when your media use becomes habitual, and you are not really thinking about what you’re doing? I am interested in the social, psychological effects of non-conscious media use, and the process of non-conscious media use formation. I look at different types of social media, including social network sites, peer-production online communities, and social games, pairing behavioral measures with self-report.

My early work focused on identification of habitual use in different types of media such as social games and how habitual use of social media was related to motivations (Wohn et al., 2010; Wohn, 2012). I also examined how habitual use of social media and compulsive use of social media predicted different outcomes such as educational motivation (LaRose, Wohn, Ellison, & Steinfield, 2011), interpersonal relationships (Wohn & Lee, 2012, May), and participation in online peer-production communities (Wohn, Velasquez, Bjornrud, & Lampe, 2012).

• Wohn, D. Y. (2012). The role of habit strength in social network game play. Communication Research Reports, 29, 74-79.
• Wohn, D. Y., Velasquez, A., Bjornrud, T., & Lampe, C. (2012). Habit as an explanation of participation in an online peer-production community. In J. A. Konstan (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’12), pp. 2905-2914. New York, NY: ACM.

Social Media and Education

I have authored several studies looking at the relationship between social media usage and education. The first study was of students’ use of Facebook for classroom-related purposes. I also looked at the effect of compulsive use of Facebook on academic motivation and academic performance. More recently, I have been involved in a project funded by the Gates Foundation to look at college aspirations of socio-economically disadvantaged high school students and examining how social media affects first-generation students’ efficacy of college application processes and perception of college success.

• Wohn, D. Y., Ellison, N. B.,  Khan, M. L., & Fewins-Bliss, R., & Gray, R. (2013). The Role of Social Media in Shaping First-Generation High School Students’ College Aspirations: A Social Capital Lens. Computers & Education
• Lampe. C., Wohn, D. Y., Vitak, J., Ellison, N., Wash, R. (2011). Student use of Facebook for organizing collaborative classroom activities. International Journal of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, 6, 329-347.

Role of Feedback in Online Communities

A growing area of research that strongly overlaps with my interest in habit, is how feedback is perceived by users in online communities. The most recent work that I’ve done in this area looks at the role of paralinguistic digital affordances– simple types of feedback such as “Likes” on Facebook- on perceived social support.

• Hayes, R., Carr, C. T., & Wohn, D. Y. (2016). One click, many meanings: Interpreting paralinguistic digital affordances in social media. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media
• Walther, J. B., Liang, Y., Ganster, T., Wohn, D. Y., & Emington, J. (2012). Online reviews, helpfulness ratings, and consumer attitudes: An extension of congruity theory to multiple sources in Web 2.0. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 18, 97-112.
• Sarkar, C., Wohn, D. Y., & Lampe, C. (2012). A quantitative explanation of governance in a peer-production online community. In J. A. Konstan (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2012 ACM annual conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’12), pp. 2939-2942. New York, NY: ACM

Collaboration in Social Network Sites

As part of an NSF-supported grant, I examined how people were engaging in ad-hoc collaboration in social network sites such as Facebook.

• Lampe. C., Wohn, D. Y., Vitak, J., Ellison, N., Wash, R. (2011). Student use of Facebook for organizing collaborative classroom activities. International Journal of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, 6, 329-347.
• Wohn, D. Y., Lampe, C., Vitak, J., & Ellison, N. (2011). Coordinating the ordinary: Social information uses of Facebook by adults. In Proceedings of the 2011 iConference, pp. 340- 347. New York, NY: ACM