In this paper, we argue that strategic information operations (e.g. disinformation, political propaganda, and other forms of online manipulation) are a critical concern for CSCW researchers, and that the CSCW community can provide vital insight into understanding how these operations function-by examining them as collaborative "work" within online crowds. First, we provide needed definitions and a framework for conceptualizing strategic information operations, highlighting related literatures and noting historical context. Next, we examine three case studies of online information operations using a sociotechnical lens that draws on CSCW theories and methods to account for the mutual shaping of technology, social structure, and human action. Through this lens, we contribute a more nuanced understanding of these operations (beyond "bots" and "trolls") and highlight a persistent challenge for researchers, platform designers, and policy makers-distinguishing between orchestrated, explicitly coordinated, information operations and the emergent, organic behaviors of an online crowd.

/pdf/disinformation-as-collaborative-work-surfacing-the-10xpmon13v.pdf

Disinformation as Collaborative Work: Surfacing the Participatory Nature of Strategic Information Operations

Research has brought forth a variety of authentication systems to mitigate observation attacks. However, there is little work about shoulder surfing situations in the real world. We present the results of a user survey (N=174) in which we investigate actual stories about shoulder surfing on mobile devices from both users and observers. Our analysis indicates that shoulder surfing mainly occurs in an opportunistic, non-malicious way. It usually does not have serious consequences, but evokes negative feelings for both parties, resulting in a variety of coping strategies. Observed data was personal in most cases and ranged from information about interests and hobbies to login data and intimate details about third persons and relationships. Thus, our work contributes evidence for shoulder surfing in the real world and informs implications for the design of privacy protection mechanisms.

/pdf/understanding-shoulder-surfing-in-the-wild-stories-from-1pcllr63z3.pdf

Understanding Shoulder Surfing in the Wild: Stories from Users and Observers

Delivery drones and ‘air taxis’ are currently among the most intensely discussed emerging technologies, likely to expand mobility into the ‘third dimension’ of low-level airspace. This paper presents a systematic literature review of 111 interdisciplinary publications (2013 - 03/2019). The review systematizes the current socio-technical debate on civil drones for transportation purposes allowing for a (critical) interim assessment. To guide the review process four dimensions of analysis were defined. A total of 2581 relevant quotations were subdivided into anticipated barriers (426), potential problems (1037), proposed solutions (737) and expected benefits (381). We found that the debate is characterized by predominantly technical and regulatory problems and barriers which are considered to prevent or impede the use of drones for parcel and passengers transportation. At the same time, definite economic expectations are juxtaposed with quite complex and differentiated concerns regarding societal and environmental impacts. Scrutinizing the most prevalent transportation-related promises of traffic reduction, travel time saving and environmental relief we found that there is a strong need to provide scientific evidence for the promises linked to the use of drones for transportation. We conclude that the debate on drones for transportation needs further qualification, emphasizing societal benefits and public involvement more strongly.

/pdf/drones-for-parcel-and-passenger-transportation-a-literature-1od4bt914i.pdf

Drones for parcel and passenger transportation: A literature review

Advertisers develop algorithms to select the most relevant advertisements for users. However, the opacity of these algorithms, along with their potential for violating user privacy, has decreased user trust and preference in behavioral advertising. To mitigate this, advertisers have started to communicate algorithmic processes in behavioral advertising. However, how revealing parts of the algorithmic process affects users' perceptions towards ads and platforms is still an open question. To investigate this, we exposed 32 users to why an ad is shown to them, what advertising algorithms infer about them, and how advertisers use this information. Users preferred interpretable, non-creepy explanations about why an ad is presented, along with a recognizable link to their identity. We further found that exposing users to their algorithmically-derived attributes led to algorithm disillusionment---users found that advertising algorithms they thought were perfect were far from it. We propose design implications to effectively communicate information about advertising algorithms.

Communicating Algorithmic Process in Online Behavioral Advertising

Technological advances have recently led to the development of urban air mobility (UAM), an alternative transportation mode with several concepts including vehicles operated by on-demand fully-automated vertical take-off and landing aircraft (VTOL) for intra-city passenger transportation. However, despite a growing interest in UAM, understanding users’ perceptions to it remains limited. This research aims to identify and quantify the factors affecting the adoption and use of UAM, based on relevant tools from the literature, such as recurring factors in studies on aerial vehicle concepts, ground autonomous vehicles, but also acceptance models, such as the Technology Acceptance Model by Davis et al. (1989). A stated-preference survey was developed to assess the perception of users in terms of adoption time horizon, including options such as the first six years of the service’s implementation, “unsure”, and “never”. The obtained results were evaluated using exploratory factor analyses, and the specification and estimation of suitable discrete choice models, multinomial logit models (MNLs) and ordered logit models (OLMs), with adoption time horizon as dependent variable. Findings revealed the importance of safety and trust, affinity to automation, data concerns, social attitude, and socio-demographics for adoption. Factors, such as the value of time savings, the perception of automation costs, and service reliability, were also found to be highly influential. There was also an indication that skeptical respondents, i.e. answering “unsure”, had a behavior similar to late and non-adopters, i.e. adoption time horizon higher than six years or answering “never”. The summarized results were represented in an extended Technology Acceptance Model for urban air mobility, and provided insights for policymakers and industrial stakeholders.

/pdf/factors-affecting-the-adoption-and-use-of-urban-air-mobility-180i5jqy1x.pdf

Factors affecting the adoption and use of urban air mobility

Home is a person's castle, a private and protected space. Internet-connected devices such as locks, cameras, and speakers might make a home "smarter" but also raise privacy issues because these devices may constantly and inconspicuously collect, infer or even share information about people in the home. To explore user-centered privacy designs for smart homes, we conducted a co-design study in which we worked closely with diverse groups of participants in creating new designs. This study helps fill the gap in the literature between studying users' privacy concerns and designing privacy tools only by experts. Our participants' privacy designs often relied on simple strategies, such as data localization, disconnection from the Internet, and a private mode. From these designs, we identified six key design factors: data transparency and control, security, safety, usability and user experience, system intelligence, and system modality. We discuss how these factors can guide design for smart home privacy.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3290605.3300428

Defending My Castle: A Co-Design Study of Privacy Mechanisms for Smart Homes

As the Internet of Things (IoT) devices make their ways into people's homes, traditional dwellings are turning into smart homes. While prior empirical studies have examined people's privacy concerns of smart homes and their desired ways of mitigating these concerns, the focus was primarily on the end users or device owners. Our research investigated the privacy perceptions and design ideas of smart home bystanders, i.e., people who are not the owners nor the primary users of smart home devices but can potentially be involved in the device usage, such as other family members or guests. We conducted focus groups and co-design activities with eighteen participants. We identified three impacting factors of bystanders' privacy perceptions (e.g., perceived norms) and a number of design factors to mitigate their privacy concerns (e.g., asking for device control). We highlighted bystanders' needs for privacy and controls, as well as the tension of privacy expectations between the owners/users and the bystanders in smart homes. We discussed how future designs can better support and balance the privacy needs of different stakeholders in smart homes.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3359161

Privacy Perceptions and Designs of Bystanders in Smart Homes

Abstract Drones are unmanned aircraft controlled remotely or operated autonomously. While the extant literature suggests that drones can in principle invade people’s privacy, little is known about how people actually think about drones. Drawing from a series of in-depth interviews conducted in the United States, we provide a novel and rich account of people’s privacy perceptions of drones for civilian uses both in general and under specific usage scenarios. Our informants raised both physical and information privacy issues against government, organization and individual use of drones. Informants’ reasoning about the acceptance of drone use was in part based on whether the drone is operating in a public or private space. However, our informants differed significantly in their definitions of public and private spaces. While our informants’ privacy concerns such as surveillance, data collection and sharing have been raised for other tracking technologies such as camera phones and closed-circuit television (CCTV), our interviews highlight two heightened issues of drones: (1) powerful yet inconspicuous data collection, (2) hidden and inaccessible drone controllers. These two aspects of drones render some of people’s existing privacy practices futile (e.g., notice recording and ask controllers to stop or delete the recording). Some informants demanded notifications of drones near them and expected drone controllers asking for their explicit permissions before recording. We discuss implications for future privacy-enhancing drone designs.

https://sciendo.com/pdf/10.1515/popets-2016-0022

Flying Eyes and Hidden Controllers: A Qualitative Study of People’s Privacy Perceptions of Civilian Drones in The US

Online Behavioral Advertising (OBA) is pervasive on the Internet. While there is a line of empirical research that studies Internet users' attitudes and privacy preferences of OBA, little is known about their actual understandings of how OBA works. This is an important question to answer because people often draw on their understanding to make decisions. Through a qualitative study conducted in an iterative manner, we identify four "folk models" held by our participants about how OBA works and show how these models are either incomplete or inaccurate in representing common OBA practices. We discuss how privacy tools can be designed to consider these folk models. In addition, most of our participants felt that the information being tracked is more important than who the web trackers are. This suggests the potential for an information-based blocking scheme rather than a tracker-based blocking scheme used by most existing ad-blocking tools.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2998181.2998316

Folk Models of Online Behavioral Advertising

Drones pose privacy concerns such as surveillance and stalking. Many technology-based or policy-based mechanisms have been proposed to mitigate these concerns. However, it is unclear how drone controllers and bystanders perceive these mechanisms and whether people intend to adopt them. In this paper, we report results from two rounds of online survey with 169 drone controllers and 717 bystanders in the U.S. We identified respondents' perceived pros and cons of eight privacy mechanisms. We found that owner registration and automatic face blurring individually received most support from both controllers and bystanders. Our respondents also suggested using varied combinations of mechanisms under different drone usage scenarios, highlighting their context-dependent preferences. We outline a set of important questions for future privacy designs and public policies of drones.

Yaxing Yao

Papers

Defending My Castle: A Co-Design Study of Privacy Mechanisms for Smart Homes

Privacy Perceptions and Designs of Bystanders in Smart Homes

Flying Eyes and Hidden Controllers: A Qualitative Study of People’s Privacy Perceptions of Civilian Drones in The US

Folk Models of Online Behavioral Advertising

Privacy Mechanisms for Drones: Perceptions of Drone Controllers and Bystanders