Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a crowdsourcing system in which tasks are distributed to population of thousands anonymous workers for completion. This increasingly popular with researchers and developers. Here we extend previous studies the demographics usage behaviors MTurk workers. We describe how worker has changed over time, shifting from primarily moderate-income, U.S.-based workforce towards an international group significant young, well-educated Indian change points may treat...

As HCI researchers have explored the possibilities of human computation, they paid less attention to ethics and values crowdwork. This paper offers an analysis Amazon Mechanical Turk, a popular computation system, as site technically mediated worker-employer relations. We argue that currently relies on worker invisibility. then present Turkopticon, activist system allows workers publicize evaluate their relationships with employers. common infrastructure, Turkopticon also enables engage one...

As our technologies travel to new cultural contexts and designs methods engage constituencies, both design analytical practices face significant challenges. We offer postcolonial computing as an orientation better understand these This analytic inspires four key shifts in approach HCI4D efforts: generative models of culture, development a historical program, uneven economic relations, epistemologies. Then, through reconsideration the engagement, articulation translation other contexts, we...

Crowdsourcing systems do more than get information work done. This paper argues that microwork produce the difference between “innovative” laborers and “menial” laborers, ameliorating resulting tensions in new media production cultures turn. focuses on Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT) as an emblematic case of crowdsourcing. Ethical research crowdsourcing has focused questions worker fairness microlabor alienation. cultural AMT’s mediations: divisions labor software interfaces. draws from...

Digitally mediated labor can take many forms: valorized and visible, hidden forgotten, or even disavowed. This article examines one particular digital work system: Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT). AMT is a system that organizes tens of thousands workers to do data-processing work; might contract with hundreds employers in year without ever meeting them. Employers, likewise, access these through computer interfaces interacting I examine the AMT-mediated computational relations between...

Today the halls of Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) Davos reverberate with optimism that hacking, brainstorming, crowdsourcing can transform citizenship, development, education alike. This article examines these claims ethnographically historically an eye toward kinds social orders such practices produce. focuses on a hackathon, one emblematic site practice where techniques from information technology (IT) production become ways remaking culture. Hackathons sometimes produce...

By lowering the costs of communication, web promises to enable distributed collectives act around shared issues. However, many collective action efforts never succeed: while web's affordances make it easy gather, these same decentralizing characteristics impede any focus towards action. In this paper, we study challenges through lens online labor by engaging with Amazon Mechanical Turk workers. Through a year ethnographic fieldwork, sought understand workers' unique barriers We then created...

The authors suggest that postcolonial science studies can do more than expand answers to questions already posed; it generate different and ways of looking at the world. To illustrate, draw on existing histories anthropologies critical theories colonial technoscience. move forward together, rather remaining mired in regretful contemplation past biases, offer some analytical practical suggestions. In reading hegemonic forms computing, this article offers tactics for rereading, rewriting, or...

Paid crowd workers are not just an API call---but all too often, they treated like one.

This paper argues that designers committed to advancing justice and other non-market values must attend not only the design of objects, processes, situations, but also wider economic cultural imaginaries as a social role. The illustrates argument through case Turkopticon, originally an activist tool for workers in Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT), built by authors maintained since 2009. analyzes public depictions Turkopticon which cast creative innovators AMT without agency or capacity change...

High-level guidelines for the treatment of crowdworkers.

This paper examines the emergence of “design thinking” as a form technical expertise. It demonstrates that articulates racialized understanding labor, judgment, and subject attempts to maintain whiteness at apex global hierarchies labor.“Design is expertise poses design not giving, but empathic reason by which executives can plan products, services, accumulation. Silicon Valley, business schools, reformers promote it caring some guide futures for others. The will examine history concept –...

The study of power and oppression is has always been integral to CSCW research. From studies less visible forms maintenance practice understanding the effects categorization on users social media, scholars highlight ways in which certain publics are marginalized through systems that purport serve them. Alongside this, researchers taking up participatory action research approaches interventionist modes inquiry have begun question these arrangements, design oriented projects. This panel brings...

This panel will explore algorithmic authority as it manifests and plays out across multiple domains. Algorithmic refers to the power of algorithms manage human action influence what information is accessible users. Algorithms increasingly have ability affect everyday life, work practices, economic systems through automated decision-making interpretation "big data". Cases include algorithmically curating news social media feeds, evaluating job performance, matching dates, hiring firing...

This paper investigates a hidden dimension of research with real world stakes: subjects who care -- sometimes deeply about the topic in which they participate. They manifest this care, we show, by managing how are represented process, exercising politics shaping knowledge production, and experiencing trauma process. We draw first-hand reflections on participation diversity Wikipedia, transforming participants from objects study to active negotiators depict vulnerability, harm, emotions shape...

At a cost to both their own opportunities and society's ability produce people with much-needed technical skills, women continue be underrepresented in computer science degree programs at the undergraduate graduate level. Although some of barriers that face have foundations cultural expectations established well before college level, we believe departments can take effective steps increase recruitment retention students. This paper describes several strategies adopted Stanford over past decade.

"Tools for human computers" is an underexplored design space in computation research, which has focused on techniques buyers of rather than sellers. We characterize the sellers one market, Mechanical Turk, and describe some challenges they face. list several projects developed to approach these problems, conclude with a open questions relevant sellers, buyers, researchers.

Crowdfunding, the request of resources through social media, has generated much discussion in popular press; however, there have been few systematic empirical studies this growing phenomenon. We bring together leading HCI researchers crowdfunding and crowdsourcing to discuss potentially transformative socio-technical innovation that may advance (or harm) human capabilities innovate collaborate. will current research on future field from diverse perspectives including computer science,...

research-article Share on From critical design to infrastructure: lessons from turkopticon Authors: Lilly Irani University of California, San Diego DiegoView Profile , M. Six Silberman Irvine IrvineView Authors Info & Claims InteractionsVolume 21Issue 4July + August 2014 pp 32–35https://doi.org/10.1145/2627392Online:01 July 2014Publication History 27citation936DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations27Total Downloads936Last 12 Months271Last 6 weeks33 Get Citation AlertsNew Alert added!This alert has...

As crucial public functions are transferred to computer systems, emerging technologies have implications that often shaped beyond influence and oversight. "Smart city" "modernization" projects just some examples of such transformations. This paper focuses on struggles over the acquisition, control, maintenance these public, digital infrastructures. We focus forms HCI knowledge practice proved useful a coalition community organizations claiming rights input into political oversight...

Understanding intercultural collaboration is a thorny problem in CSCW and organizational studies that grows ever more important as globalization increases interactions among individuals, groups, technologies. We suggest Postcolonial Studies may offer richer frameworks for analysis than taxonomic models of culture such Hofstede's dimensions difference. A postcolonial perspective sees dynamic always changing, stressing the importance colonial histories, uneven economic relations, local...

This paper examines the emergence of “design thinking” as a form technical expertise. It demonstrates that articulates racialized understanding labor, judgment, and subject attempts to maintain whiteness at apex global hierarchies labor.“Design is expertise poses design not giving, but empathic reason by which executives can plan products, services, accumulation. Silicon Valley, business schools, reformers promote it caring some guide futures for others. The will examine history concept –...