sohyeon hwang

@s0hw.bsky.social

postdoc @princetoncitp.bsky.social i study and support community-based models of governing technologies. https://www.sohyeonhwang.com/

🏃‍♀️ homestretch! start your last day at #CHI2026 at the "Community Governance and Moderation" 9AM session tomorrow in Room 114 🤠 I'll be presenting our new work envisioning how we can make community-run social media more sustainable through a "community of communities": dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...

Governing Together: Toward Infrastructure for Community-Run Social Media | Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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dl.acm.org

ICYMI: Finally blogged about an old paper (led by @groceryheist.cc) that explains why people often engage in multiple groups with overlapping topic and membership, and which helps explain why competition between online groups seems to be rare. mako.cc/copyrighteou...

Why do people participate in similar online communities?

Note: I have not published blog posts about my academic papers over the past few years. To ensure that my blog contains a more comprehensive record of my published papers and to surface these for f…

mako.cc

You have to read this. Firsthand affidavit from one of the women who was there and recording the video. She talks about how Alex Pretti was directing traffic when she arrived. She watched him be killed in front of her. She's afraid to go home, worried she'll be arrested.

1. I am a resident of the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota. I am over 18 years of age. I am a children's entertainer who specializes in face painting.
2. On Saturday, January 24, 2026, at about 8:50 am, I was getting ready to go to work when I heard whistles outside. I knew the whistles meant that ICE agents were in the area, so I decided to check it out on my way to work. I've been involved in observing in my community because it is so important to document what ICE is doing to my neighbors. Connecting to your local community and knowing who your neighbors are is something I profoundly value.
3. I drove to Nicollet Ave. and 26th where I could hear the whistles coming from. I turned south onto Nicollet. There were already several ICE agents there and they'd set up a sort of vehicle convoy on Nicollet and 28th. There were also about 15 observers there, recording and observing ICE.
4. I saw ICE agents surrounding cars and punching car windows. I also saw them stopping vehicles further down Nicollet, so I backed up because I didn't feel safe continuing on.
5. I noticed a man sort of acting to help traffic move more smoothly. He helped me find a place to park. I got out with my whistle and my camera. I went over to him and said something like, "I'm going to film and use my whistle."
6. It seemed like most ICE activity was happening a little farther down the street from us, near 27th. Someone was being thrown to the ground.7. I started recording. There was an agent by a car across the street. Two observers were a few feet away from the agent, blowing their whistles. One was wearing a backpack.
8. I and the man who was observing and helping direct traffic were standing in the street. There was a phone in the man's hand recording a video.
9. An agent approached and asked us to back up, so I moved slowly back onto the sidewalk.
10. The man stayed in the street, filming as the other observers I mentioned earlier were being forced backward by another ICE agent threatening them with pepper spray. The man went closer to support them as they got threatened, just with his camera out. I didn't see him reach for or hold a gun.
11. Then the ICE agent shoved one of the other observers to the ground. Then he started pepper spraying all three of them directly in the face and all over. The man with the phone put his hands above his head and the agent sprayed him again and pushed him.
12. Then the man tried to help up the woman the ICE agent had shoved to the ground. The ICE agents just kept spraying. More agents came over and grabbed the man who was still trying to help the woman get up. All three of the observers looked to have been badly affected by the pepper spray. I could feel the pepper spray in my eyes.13. The agents pulled the man on the ground. I didn't see him touch any of them-he wasn't even turned toward them. It didn't look like he was trying to resist, just trying to help the woman up. I didn't see him with a gun. They threw him to the ground. Four or five agents had him on the ground and they just started shooting him. They shot him so many times.
14.1 don't know why they shot him. He was only helping. I was five feet from him and they just shot him.
15. The video I recorded of what happened accurately depicts the events leading up to the agents shooting him and several minutes afterwards. The video is attached as Exhibit 1.
16. I have read the statement from DHS about what happened and it is wrong. The man did not approach the agents with a gun. He approached them with a camera. He was just trying to help a woman get up and they took him to the ground.
17. I feel afraid. Only hours have passed since they shot a man right in front me and I don't feel like I can go home because I heard agents were looking for me. I don't know what the agents will do when they find me. I do know that they're not telling the truth about what happened. I've heard that other witnesses might have been arrested and taken to the Whipple Building.
18. I am disgusted and gutted at how they are treating my neighbors and my state. I keep alternating between crying and feeling determined it is important to remember the value of documenting injustice. We show up for the people who need us to bearwitness, because it can't just be one group of people bearing the brunt of their tyranny. This is a struggle to protect our freedom and democracy, those things are on the line. He lost his life for those values.
I declare under penalty of perjury that everything I have stated in this document is true and correct.

Dated and signed on Jan 24, 2026 in Hennepin County, State of Minnesota.
Josh Gerstein@joshgerstein.bsky.social · 6mo ago

JUST IN: Lawyers file declaration in federal court from first-hand witness to immigration agents' shooting of a US citizen onlookers today. Minneapolis Mayor Frey said details would be used to bolster case for ousting ICE from city. Doc: www.documentcloud.org/documents/26...

I know this probably isn't very useful since I don't even have speaker's notes, but here are the slides from that recent talk. The title was "The Librarian’s Dividend: Pathways towards Information Ethics and Literacy in the Age of Generative AI" docs.google.com/presentation...

The Librarian's Dividence (ALA Core Forum).pptx

✨The Librarian’s Dividend✨ Pathways towards Information Ethics and Literacy in the Age of Generative AI Casey Fiesler | casey.prof Image credit: OpenAI’s DALL-E and countless uncredited and uncompensa...

docs.google.com

help spread the word about this campaign - or, if you're able, consider supporting yourself! Bonfire is building a modular toolkit for organizing, mutual aid, open science, and collective decision-making on the open social web. communities choose what gets built: www.indiegogo.com/en/projects/...

Bonfire: building blocks for communities on the open social web by Bonfire - Indiegogo

From platforms to communities: a federated social web with shared foundations and co‑created spaces for gathering, care, connection, and stewardship.

indiegogo.com

I’ll be presenting this work at #CSCW2025 in Bergen on Tuesday at 2:30PM! We will be part of the session “Core Concepts in Privacy Research” (in the Bekken room) chaired by @emtseng.bsky.social ☺️

ACM CSCW@acm-cscw.bsky.social · 10mo ago

Decentralized social media lets people build custom communities, but what happens when communities interact? New #CSCW2025 work by @s0hw.bsky.social, Priyanka Nanayakkara, and Yan Shvartzshnaider explores how trust — and frictions — shape expectations on the #Fediverse

📣 Attention science + tech journalists! Trying to keep up with the flood of research papers that come out every day? Attempting to track what research has already been covered by others, and what may benefit from deeper exploration? You are invited to participate in our research study! [1/3]

A rectangular Northwestern University flyer titled “Call for Study Participants.” The top banner is pink with bold black text reading “CALL FOR STUDY PARTICIPANTS.” Below it, highlighted in yellow, is the question: “Are you a journalist writing about technology and/or computing?” The flyer explains that researchers at Northwestern University are seeking professional journalists who cover technology or related topics, write news in English, and are based in the U.S. to participate in an online study. The study involves using a tool for two weeks, providing feedback, and receiving $100 compensation (IRB Study #STU00224608). It includes a yellow box that says “Fill out our eligibility form if you’re interested!” with the link https://tinyurl.com/newscompass and contact emails: Nick Diakopoulos (nad@northwestern.edu) and Sachita Nishal (nishal@u.northwestern.edu). The Northwestern University seal appears in the top-right corner.

I'm co-organizing #CSCW NE, an in-person regional gathering for people in Northeast America, alongside some folks from Stevens, Rutgers, and Princeton. If you want to come hang out (especially if you can't make it out to the full conference in Bergen this year), RSVP at cscw-ne.hci.social!

A faded etching of the Hudson River from Hoboken is overlaid with the following text: CSCW Northeast 2025, in-person regional gathering. Friday, October 3, 2025, 10AM-4:30PM at University Center Complex, Stevens Institute of Technology. RSVP: cscw-ne.hci.social

The logos of HCI at Stevens, Princeton HCI, and Rutgers University are on the right-hand side.

"In connection with “A Manifesto for Wikimedia Rsrch: Critically Studying Media as Infrastructure”, [we call] for rschrs to critically examine Wikimedia's role as global knwldg infrastructure[, which involves] historicizing [its] epistemology [+] recognizing the dispossession of the commons..."

Uniting and reigniting critical Wikimedia research - Steve Jankowski, Heather Ford, Andrew Iliadis, Francesca Sidoti, 2025

Over the past fifteen years, Wikimedia's technical relationships and social meanings have shifted from supporting the creation of an encyclopedia that seek...

journals.sagepub.com

They're called public records for a reason. Starting today, WIRED will *stop paywalling* articles that are primarily based on public records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, becoming the first publication to partner with @freedom.press to offer this for our new coverage.

Wired is dropping paywalls for FOIA-based reporting. Others should follow

As the administration does its best to hide public records from the public, Wired magazine is stepping up to help stem the secrecy

freedom.press

Want to go visit the national parks this year? Sorry. The reservation system is shut down, EMT personnel are gone, so don't get hurt or lost. No one can clean the bathrooms or cabins, so they'll be closed. Rangers are fired. www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti...

Yosemite halts camping reservations, with no timetable for their return

Yosemite halts camping reservations, with no timetable for their return at a time when federal employees are being laid off

sfchronicle.com

"The govt’s unique structure + position allow it to play a distinct role from the private sector... Focusing on near-term returns will not make public investments more efficient in the long run. It merely eliminates the govt's unique advantages to advance scientific research for the public benefit."

A Defense of Weird Research—Asterisk

Government-funded scientific research may appear strange or impractical, but it has repeatedly yielded scientific breakthroughs — and continues to pay for itself many times over.

asteriskmag.com