arXiv subjects

Nusrat Jahan Mim

Publications and source records attributed to Nusrat Jahan Mim.

2 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Assembling, Breaking, and Refusing the Mask: Agency in AI-Mediated Self-Presentation in Livestreaming

Our mixed-method study examines how Chinese women livestreamers use masking to construct idealized mediated personas while navigating gendered, commercial, organizational, and platform pressures alongside personal agendas. We built on the concept of masking, analyzed 627 recruitment posts, and conducted livestream observations and interviews with 26 Chinese women streamers. We found that streamers assembled masks across bodies, AI-mediated technologies, spaces, performances, and social relations to become recognizable while protecting personal boundaries. These masks were continually negotiated, and participants sometimes broke, resisted, or refused them when demands became misaligned or unsustainable. We conceptualize masking as a sociotechnical assemblage in which agency lies in preserving, disrupting, and reconfiguring relations rather than controlling a single interface. We further theorize breaking as a consequential part of masking that exposes hidden labor and unequal costs of visibility. We offer theoretical and design directions for more negotiable, contestable, and agency-supporting AI-mediated self- presentation.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2026

Generative AI Alignment with Hinduism's Theological Plurality and Sacred Representation

Generative AI systems are increasingly used to answer personal questions and mediate everyday practices, including religion. However, existing discussions around AI alignment and ethics have largely centered secular, Western, and Abrahamic assumptions about religion, offering limited attention to other faith-based traditions. In this paper, we examine how Hindu users engage with generative AI systems in relation to their religious knowledge, belief, and practice. Drawing on 15 semi-structured interviews with Bangladeshi Hindu participants, we analyze how users interpret AI-generated religious representations, scriptural explanations, devotional interactions, and synthetic religious media. We found that AI can be both accessible and ethically troubling. While AI supported scriptural inquiry, devotional visualization, and religious storytelling, our study also identified concerns about theological flattening, cultural misrepresentation, devotional manipulation, and the simulation of sacred presence and authority. We conclude by arguing that religious alignment in generative AI requires interpretive alignment: systems that disclose their limits, preserve plurality, and avoid simulating sacred authority and sycophantic personalization.

cs.AI↗