Chien Wen Yuan | Searcharxiv

arXiv2018

The Roots of Bias on Uber

In the last decade, there has been a growth in, what we call, digitally mediated workplaces. A digitally mediated workplace is one where interactions between stakeholders are primarily managed by proprietary, algorithmically managed digital platform. The replacement of the relationships between the stakeholders by the platform is a key feature of these workplaces, and is a contributing factor to the decrease in contractual responsibilities each stakeholder has to one another. In this paper, we discuss some of the ways in which this structure and lack of accountability serves as a root of, or at least an enabler to, the realization of biases in the ridesharing application Uber, a digitally mediated workplace.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2013

De-Virtualizing Social Events: Understanding the Gap between Online and Offline Participation for Event Invitations

One growing use of computer-based communication media is for gathering people to initiate or sustain social events. Although the use of computer-mediated communication and social network sites such as Facebook for event promotion is becoming popular, online participation in an event does not always translate to offline attendance. In this paper, we report on an interview study of 31 participants that examines how people handle online event invitations and what influences their online and offline participation. The results show that people's event participation is shaped by their social perceptions of the event's nature (e.g., public or private), their relationships to others (e.g., the strength of their connections to other invitees), and the medium used to communicate event information (e.g., targeted invitation via email or spam communication via Facebook event page). By exploring how people decide whether to participate online or offline, the results illuminate the sophisticated nature of the mechanisms that affect participation and have design implications that can bridge virtual and real attendance.

cs.HC↗