TY - GEN
T1 - Complex mediation in the formation of political opinions
AU - Kou, Yubo
AU - Nardi, Bonnie
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).
PY - 2018/4/20
Y1 - 2018/4/20
N2 - The Internet plays an important role in the formation of political opinions by supporting citizens in discovering diverse political information and opinions. However, the echo chamber effect has become of increasing concern, referring to the tendency for people to encounter opinions and information similar to their own online. It remains poorly understood how ordinary citizens use the Internet in the formation of political opinions. To answer this question, we conducted an interview study with 32 Chinese citizens. We found that participants used complex strategies to coordinate personal networks and technologies in specific ways to better understand political events. To analyze this phenomenon, we draw on Bødker and Andersen's model of complex mediation which describes how multiple mediators including people and artifacts work together to mediate an activity. We discuss how complex mediation supported participants in informing their political opinions. We derive design implications for supporting people to form political opinions.
AB - The Internet plays an important role in the formation of political opinions by supporting citizens in discovering diverse political information and opinions. However, the echo chamber effect has become of increasing concern, referring to the tendency for people to encounter opinions and information similar to their own online. It remains poorly understood how ordinary citizens use the Internet in the formation of political opinions. To answer this question, we conducted an interview study with 32 Chinese citizens. We found that participants used complex strategies to coordinate personal networks and technologies in specific ways to better understand political events. To analyze this phenomenon, we draw on Bødker and Andersen's model of complex mediation which describes how multiple mediators including people and artifacts work together to mediate an activity. We discuss how complex mediation supported participants in informing their political opinions. We derive design implications for supporting people to form political opinions.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85046943593&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1145/3173574.3174210
DO - 10.1145/3173574.3174210
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85046943593
T3 - Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
BT - CHI 2018 - Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2018
Y2 - 21 April 2018 through 26 April 2018
ER -