Guest editing a special issue of Transactions on Social Computing

Cover of Transactions on Social Computing journal

Dr. Luther is the lead guest editor for an upcoming special issue of the journal ACM Transactions on Social Computing. The theme of the special issue, “Negotiating Truth and Trust in Socio-Technical Systems“, emerged from the Designing Socio-Technical Systems of Truth workshop that Dr. Luther led at Virginia Tech in March 2018. The special issue co-editors are Crowd Lab postdoc Jacob Thebault-Spieker, Andrea Kavanaugh (Virginia Tech), and Judd Antin (AirBnb).

Article published in AI Magazine

Dr. Luther recently published a report about the GroupSight Workshop on Human Computation for Image and Video Analysis in AI Magazine. The workshop, held at the HCOMP 2017 conference in Quebec City, Canada, was co-organized by Dr. Luther, Danna Gurari, Genevieve Patterson, and Steve Branson. More information about the workshop can be found in a Follow the Crowd blog post by Dr. Luther.

Workshop on Designing Socio-Technical Systems of Truth

Dr. Luther chaired the “Designing Socio-Technical Systems of Truth” workshop at Virginia Tech on March 1-2, 2018.

The workshop brought together over 50 faculty, student, and staff attendees to discuss the role of social technologies in promoting truth and preventing misinformation. Computer Science, History, Sociology, Communication, and Science and Technology Studies were just some of the disciplines represented by presenters.

Events included a weekly reading group, faculty lightning talks, a graduate student poster session and community reception, and several hands-on working sessions.  The workshop also featured invited keynotes by four external speakers: Jay Aronson (Carnegie Mellon), Travis Kriplean (Invisible College), Alice Marwick (UNC Chapel Hill and Data & Society Institute), and Mor Naaman (Cornell Tech).

The workshop was supported by VT’s Center for HCI, ICAT, and Dept. of Computer Science.

More information, including abstracts for the presentations and posters, is available on the workshop website. Tweets and photos are also available on the workshop’s Twitter hashtag, #SystemsOfTruth.

Second GroupSight workshop at HCOMP 2017

People sitting around a poster board with sticky notes on it

Dr. Luther, along with Danna Gurari (UT Austin), Genevieve Patterson (Brown University and Microsoft Research New England), and Steve Branson (Caltch), co-organized the second GroupSight Workshop on Human Computation for Image and Video Analysis at HCOMP 2017.

The workshop featured two keynote speakers, Meredith Ringel Morris (Microsoft Research) and Walter Lasecki (University of Michigan), along with seven paper presentations, a poster session, break-out groups, and a sponsored lunch. At the conclusion of the workshop, Dr. Luther handed out the Best Paper and Best Paper Runner-Up awards.

For more details, check out the Follow the Crowd blog post written by Dr. Luther. There will also be a short write-up in AI Magazine.

Held transcribeathon at Blacksburg Public Library

Dr. Luther and Dr. Paul Quigley hosted a Fourth of July transcribeathon at Blacksburg Public Library to coincide with Independence Day weekend. Ph.D. candidate Nai-Ching Wang and computer science major Liyan Li, both Crowd Lab members, were also on hand to help new users from the local community get started with our Incite software and the Mapping the Fourth of July project. The event also featured a variety of delicious and patriotically themed snacks provided by Andrea Linkous of the CS Department. Thanks to everyone who attended and helped organize!

Held reception for Mapping the Fourth exhibit

We held a well-attended reception at VT’s Newman Library for the opening of our exhibit for Mapping the Fourth of July in the Civil War Era. The exhibit, designed by Scott Fralin and his talented team at VT University Libraries, featured a kiosk to try our Incite software, colorful full-size panels and 3D elements showing historical maps and primary sources about July 4th and the Civil War, a visualization of the project’s many interdisciplinary collaborators, and an introductory video narrated by Paul Quigley:

Another video provides a great overview of the exhibit for those who aren’t able to attend in person. Thanks to Liz McVoy for producing these videos.

More photos of the reception are available on the Mapping the Fourth Facebook page.

Led Creativity & Cognition 2017 Graduate Student Symposium in Singapore

After much preparation, the Creativity & Cognition 2017 Graduate Student Symposium took place on June 27. The event was held at the National Gallery of Singapore. Dr. Luther and Dr. Elizabeth Churchill of Google co-chaired the event. Dr. Luther had to video conference in using Google Hangouts (see photo above) due to flight problems, but otherwise the GSS went off without a hitch. We had 13 talented graduate students working on creativity and computing research join us from universities all over the world. Thanks to Elizabeth and the other conference organizers, the students, and NSF for financial support!