Research

I currently involve undergraduate and graduate students in combining quantitative data analysis with user-centered design methods to investigate artificial intelligence and social computing. I also work at the intersection of gender, inequalities, and computing.

Human-centered artificial intelligence

I work with AI in two ways. On the one hand, I use NLP (natural language processing) to investigate regional differences in the dynamics of use and content production in social technologies, such as Wikipedia (IwC’22) and Twitter (JCSCW’22, CSCWComp’21,LAWeb’20).

On the other hand, and more recently, I am concerned about the sometimes negative impacts of AI on people’s lives, not only people who use AI systems but also those who are affected by decisions influenced by predictions made by some AI model (even if they have never used the system directly!). In this line, I have participated in writing parts of the AI Latam Index (section on ethics and AI) and a report for the APEC (forthcoming). I also participated in a multi-stakeholder consultation on AI governance for the Global Digital Compact (web). We have also published results about the folk theories about AI in public services in Chile (IJHCI’23).

There are several lines of research and development in which I am collaborating both in CENIA and the Millenius Nucleus FAIR. My goal is to contribute to the search for responsible AI development, situated in the national and regional context. Since AI is often invisible, it is there, but we don’t necessarily know it (it is not always a robot!) We are concerned about monitoring what AI systems are in use in Chile and are building an AI Observatory. We are also investigating how people develop trust (or distrust) in some AI systems in use in Chile, how that is mediated by the ways in which people understand and conceptualize AI, and seeing if those processes are different or similar to what has been learned from experiences in the Global North. We are also working on establishing a social-ethical reflection mechanism for CENIA research projects, intending to mitigate the risks of AI but also making sure we adhere to our goal of AI being at the service of people. Several papers are now under review or in the writing process.

Since I have a feminist perspective as a person, as a researcher, I seek that in each of these projects, we ask ourselves about the implications of the technologies under study on social justice and what happens to women’s experiences in relation to AI.

This work has been funded by the following projects:

Centro Nacional de Inteligencia Artificial (CENIA), Basal, ANID. Director: Soto, A.
Millenium Nucleus Futures of Artificial Intelligence and its socio-cultural implications in Chile and Latin America (FAIR), ANID. Director: Tironi, M.

Social technologies, civic participation, and democracy

As social media becomes more and more pervasive, civic society has adopted different social technologies as communication media, where citizens are both content producers and consumers. We have studied how Chilean nonprofits use social media to achieve their strategic goals (SocInfo’18, SCCC’16) and how people frame their concerns about data privacy on Twitter (CSCWComp’19, LAWeb’19). Several papers on these lines are currently under review or in progress. This work has been funded by the following projects.

“Developing a research and teaching agenda about social computing”, MEC 2019-20, Conicyt. US$25,000 (2 years). PI: López, C. Co-PI: Farzan, R.
“Twitter and presidential leadership” UTFSM Internal research project 2018-19, 11161026. US$20,000 (1.5 years). PI: López, C., Co-PI: Zuchel, L., Oyanedel, M., Tapia, C., Arana, I., Codocedo, V.
“Does social media attention matter? A longitudinal assessment of the impact of nonprofits’ social media strategies on citizen participation in urban areas” Fondecyt de Iniciación en Investigación 2016, 11161026. Conicyt. US$118,600 (3 years). PO: López, C.
“Towards a model of the impact of participatory information technologies on NGOs: An analysis of social capital networks” UTFSM Internal research project 2016, 116.24.3. US$8,800 (9 months). PI: López, C., Co-PI: Astudillo, H., Reyes, C., Hevia, L., Moreira, A. (more details about it in a note about it in Spanish)

Women, inequalities, and computing

I worry about inequalities, and I work to make computing a field that can help build a fair society. I led a project to create a platform that encourages equity and associativity among female entrepreneurs in Valparaíso. I conducted an assessment of the impact of design decisions on digital inclusion (SocInfo’17). I participate in projects and events related to the professional trajectories of female engineers (Observatorio, ChileWiC) to better understand the barriers that explain gender inequalities in this area. We have published a book chapter on diversity in engineering (news), the development of computation thinking among high school students (SCCC’18) and incoming STEM freshmen (ToED), and early work on registration attrition of women students in Informatics (SCCC’19). I also work to articulate the CSCW Latin American community and make it more impactful in the global research community (Interactions’19, CLIHC’19, catalystWorkshop’19, CSCWWorkshop’18). This work has been funded by the following projects.

“Acompañamiento de trayectorias educativas “más mujeres en ciencia” desde un enfoque de género.” UTFSM 2017 US$13,000 (18 meses). PI: Vasquez, A., Co-PI: López, C., Soto, P.
“Serendipity for equitable recommendations in digital markets: an application for associativity among female micro-entrepreneurs during a pandemic” ANID. US$68,350 (12 months). PI: López, C. Co-PI: Santander, P., Codocedo, V.
“CSCW@LatAm research catalyst workshop,” ACM-SIGCHI Development Fund 2019. US$16,250. PI: López, C. Co-PI: de Souza, C., Gaytán, S., González, F., Valderrama, E.
“Analysis of gender gaps in engineering programs” UTFSM Internal research project US$14,600 (18 months). PI: Dombrovskaia, L., Co-PI: López, C., Reyes, C.
“Women in Engineering: A study of the professional trajectories of female engineers who graduated from UTFSM” UTFSM Internal Multidisciplinary Project 2016, 216.32.1. US$14,600 (9 months). PI: Zuchel, L., Co-PI: López, C., Reyes, C., Santander, P., Cea, J.

Sustainability and evidence-based design of hyper-local participatory technologies

In the face of the growing challenge of low civic participation, technology-based endeavors, such as hyper-local social media and open government initiatives, have emerged to facilitate citizens’ involvement with their local communities. However, evidence-based guidelines about how to start and maintain sustainable social information systems for urban communities are scarce and inconclusive. This research has conducted several observational and field studies to provide this kind of guidelines. We have studied Facebook groups (CSCW’13), paper-based bulletin boards (CHI’14), Yelp reviews (WebSciTrack’15, C&T’15), MeetUps (SocInfo’17) and E-Democracy.org discussion forums (CHI’15, HICSS’15, C&T’15, SocInfo’17, TOIT’17, doctoralDissertation).

Most of this work was done during my doctoral dissertation. By then, I undertook a mixed-method investigation of e-democracy.org, one of the oldest, still active web platforms to encourage and support citizen discussion about local politics in the USA. I conducted digital trace analysis, manual and automatic content classification, social network analysis, surveys and interviews to assess the influence of online and offline factors on the sustainability of e-democracy online groups over time.

In collaboration with Rosta Farzan (Pitt), Yu-Ru Lin (Pitt), Brian Butler (UMD)

Local information landscapes

Although there is the widespread impression that all information is online (and hence is equally available everywhere), information studies are beginning to document how information can vary from location to location. How much information is available about a community, who generates it, where it is located, how it is organized — these are all ways that communities’ information landscape can differ from one another. We have conducted a series of small-scale empirical studies of different aspects of the community information landscapes, and the results suggest that they vary considerably from neighborhood to neighborhood (JUT’15, CHI’14). Ongoing work is focused on understanding which factors explain these differences, comparing online and offline information landscapes, and discovering places through local event data.

In collaboration with Brian Butler (UMD), Rosta Farzan (Pitt)

Participatory technologies for audience-bounded communities

Building online communities to support virtual interaction among members of already existing offline social structures can be challenging. Due to their small potential audience, the contribution volume will likely be insufficient to maintain sustainable community-driven systems. The perceived benefits of using the systems need to surpass not only the costs of participating as in every online community, but it also needs to provide benefits that cannot be easily achieved through offline interactions. We have studied the adaptation of participatory technologies for academic conferences through field studies in Conference Navigator (see UMAP’12) according to users’ personality traits (CHI’13), offline user characteristics (iConference’13, UMAP’11), and online user activity (GROUP’12, CIC’16).

In collaboration with Dr. Peter Brusilovsky (Pitt), Dr. Jung Sun Oh (Pitt), Dr. Rosta Farzan (Pitt), Dr. Oded Nov, Dr. Yu-Ru Lin (Pitt), Denis Parra (Pitt), Sherry Sahebi (Pitt), Xidao Wen (Pitt), Wei Jeng (Pitt).

Software engineering and software architecture

Before my Ph.D. program, I worked on several research projects to: enhance the non functional requirements knowledge reuse (SCP’12, JSS’09, IWSA’08, EWSA’06, QoSA’06, IWASE’06,Models05); automatically identify and mix learning objects for specialized domains (ContentCompass funded by FONDEF); build a semantic web platform for semantic integration and contextual management of distributed heterogeneous heritage archives (M&W’08, CONTEXTA funded by FONDEF); and develop a semantic web platform for software engineers that aims to support the Chilean software companies to achieve process quality certifications using a reference development process (EuroSPI’10, Tutelkan funded by CORFO). Lately, we have published a paper on improving user stories (CLEI’18).

In collaboration with: Dr. Hernán Astudillo (UTFSM), Dr. Luiz Marcio Cysneiros (York University), Dr. Javier Pereira (UDP), Victor Codocedo (UTFSM), Pablo Inostroza (UTFSM).