arXiv subjects

Kangyu Yuan

Publications and source records attributed to Kangyu Yuan.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

CoNewsReader: Supporting Comprehensive Understanding and Raising Critical Thoughts on Social Media News Through Comments

Critical news reading (CNR), which requires grasping the holistic ideas of and raising critical thoughts on the news, is beneficial yet challenging for general people who usually get information on daily social media. Comments under the news can aid CNR by providing complementary information and other readers' diverse and critical thoughts. However, it is under-investigated how to leverage these comments to support users in CNR. In this paper, we first derive user requirements for a comment-based CNR tool from literature and a formative study (N=12). Then, we develop CoNewsReader, a comment-based interactive CNR tool powered by a large language model. CoNewsReader supports users in grasping the news idea with complementary information from comments, filtering useful comments for CNR, and getting questions generated based on the comments to conduct critical thinking. Our within-subjects study with 24 university students indicates that compared to a baseline news reading interface in social media, participants with CoNewsReader have a more engaging CNR experience and perform better on comprehending the news and raising critical thoughts. We discuss design considerations for supporting reading tasks with user- and machine-generated content.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2026

Exploring the Grassroots Understanding and Practices of Collective Memory Co-Contribution in a University Community

Collective memory -- community members' interconnected memories and impressions of the group -- is essential to the community's culture and identity. Its development requires members' continuous participatory contribution and sensemaking. However, existing works mainly adopt a holistic sociological perspective to analyze well-developed collective memory, less focusing on member-level conceptualization of this possession or what the co-contribution practices can be. Therefore, this work alternatively adopts the latter perspective and probes such interpretative and interactional patterns with two mobile systems. With one being a locative narrative and exploration system condensed from existing literature's design frameworks, and the other being a conventional online forum representing current practices, they served as the anchors of observation for our two-week, mixed-methods field study (n=38) on a university campus. A core debate we have identified was to retrospectively contemplate or document the presence as a history for the future. This also subsequently impacted the narrative focuses, expectations of collective memory constituents, and the ways participants seek inspiration from the group. We further extracted design considerations that could better embrace the diverse conceptualizations of collective memory and bond different community members together. Lastly, revisiting and reflecting on our design, we provided extra insights on designing devoted locative narrative experiences for community-driven UGC platforms.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2026

When LLMs Enter Everyday Feminism on Chinese Social Media: Opportunities and Risks for Women's Empowerment

Everyday digital feminism refers to the ordinary, often pragmatic ways women articulate lived experiences and cultivate solidarity in online spaces. In China, such practices flourish on RedNote through discussions under hashtags like ''women's growth''. Recently, DeepSeek-generated content has been taken up as a new voice in these conversations. Given widely recognized gender biases in LLMs, this raises critical concerns about how LLMs interact with everyday feminist practices. Through an analysis of 430 RedNote posts, 139 shared DeepSeek responses, and 3211 comments, we found that users predominantly welcomed DeepSeek's advice. Yet feminist critical discourse analysis revealed that these responses primarily encouraged women to self-optimize and pursue achievements within prevailing norms rather than challenge them. By interpreting this case, we discuss the opportunities and risks that LLMs introduce for everyday feminism as a pathway toward women's empowerment, and offer design implications for leveraging LLMs to better support such practices.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2026

"Shall We Dig Deeper?": Designing and Evaluating Strategies for LLM Agents to Advance Knowledge Co-Construction in Asynchronous Online Discussions

Asynchronous online discussions enable diverse participants to co-construct knowledge beyond individual contributions. This process ideally evolves through sequential phases, from superficial information exchange to deeper synthesis. However, many discussions stagnate in the early stages. Existing AI interventions typically target isolated phases, lacking mechanisms to progressively advance knowledge co-construction, and the impacts of different intervention styles in this context remain unclear and warrant investigation. To address these gaps, we conducted a design workshop to explore AI intervention strategies (task-oriented and/or relationship-oriented) throughout the knowledge co-construction process, and implemented them in an LLM-powered agent capable of facilitating progression while consolidating foundations at each phase. A within-subject study (N=60) involving five consecutive asynchronous discussions showed that the agent consistently promoted deeper knowledge progression, with different styles exerting distinct effects on both content and experience. These findings provide actionable guidance for designing adaptive AI agents that sustain more constructive online discussions.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Charting the Future of AI in Project-Based Learning: A Co-Design Exploration with Students

The increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by students in learning presents new challenges for assessing their learning outcomes in project-based learning (PBL). This paper introduces a co-design study to explore the potential of students' AI usage data as a novel material for PBL assessment. We conducted workshops with 18 college students, encouraging them to speculate an alternative world where they could freely employ AI in PBL while needing to report this process to assess their skills and contributions. Our workshops yielded various scenarios of students' use of AI in PBL and ways of analyzing these uses grounded by students' vision of education goal transformation. We also found students with different attitudes toward AI exhibited distinct preferences in how to analyze and understand the use of AI. Based on these findings, we discuss future research opportunities on student-AI interactions and understanding AI-enhanced learning.

cs.HC↗