Although the call to ``study up'' --- directing the scholarly gaze towards elites --- was made over half a century ago, HCI scholarship in this area remains underdeveloped. This paper demonstrates digital ethnography as a critical entry point, particularly for researchers from marginalised positionality facing refusals and deterrents when accessing elite social worlds. Drawing on 20 months of digital ethnography on Brahmin women food vloggers in Kerala, India, we show how caste-privileged cultural producers caste-code socio-technical practices of nichification, leverage platform affordances and constitute conservative caste enclaves in response to anxieties about threats to the prestige associated with Brahmin ways of life. These enclaves archive and circulate Brahmin food pedagogies, preserve caste customs and norms, guide younger Brahmin generations to remain connected to their roots, and seek recognition from wider publics. By foregrounding these dynamics, we expand methodological and political possibilities for ``studying up'' and critical caste and technology studies in HCI.
States increasingly weaponize digital infrastructures through censorship and surveillance. Iran represents an acute case of this broader global pattern. We study how citizens sustain connectivity and agency during Iran’s Women--Life--Freedom (WLF) protests. Based on 21 interviews with citizens and digital activists in Kermanshah province, inside Iran and in the diaspora, we document a shift from dependence on commercial circumvention to grassroots infrastructuring: people created and shared VPNs, proxies, and ad hoc communication pipelines. Peer learning on platforms such as Telegram, X, and GitHub—via Persian tutorials, scripts, and troubleshooting—enabled rapid adaptation under repression.
We identify four dynamics: (1) distrust and survival as primary motivations; (2) infrastructural solidarity as everyday care; (3) technical improvisation and peer teaching; and (4) persistent constraints from censorship and risk.
We argue that grassroots infrastructuring reframes end-user development as survival work. The paper contributes empirical evidence and design implications for HCI/CSCW on civic technologies, digital activism, and infrastructures of participation under authoritarian control.
Previous research shows how animacy attribution is shaped by perceptual and cognitive processes based on morphological and behavioural characteristics. Existing evidence is largely focused on passive observation of movement on a screen or scenarios involving predefined interactions. We explore cognitive animacy perceptions of 19 participants during embodied engagement with a spatial-scale kinetic origami surface with no defined interaction modalities. In a mixed-methods study, we collected EEG data, Godspeed Questionnaire evaluations, videos of participants engaging with the surface and semi-structured interviews to understand participants’ experiences. Our results show individuals' animacy perceptions are constructed through complex embodied meaning-making processes, affected by artifacts’ morpho-behavioural traits as well as individuals’ actions and interpretations. However, widespread brain activations make it hard to pinpoint to specific neurological phenomena. We unpack intrinsic and extrinsic factors shaping animacy perception, articulate the importance of ambiguity in the design of animate objects and present application scenarios for our prototype.
Although communication with audiences abroad is important for movements based in regions with complicated geopolitical contexts, it has received limited research attention. To address this gap, we collected and analyzed English-language tweets posted during the Russia-Ukraine conflict of 2014, focusing on understanding the content and practices associated with external-facing communication on social media. Based on the political alignment of tweets and users, determined by hashtag projection, we divided the data into discourses associated with the opposing pro-Ukrainian and pro-separatist movements, along with a neutral discourse. Through topic modeling and qualitative coding, we identified 21 diverse themes across the three discourses, suggesting that users could benefit from more targeted ways of engaging with social media content that enable focused participation. We observed that the pro-Ukrainian movement struggled to sustain long-term participation and compete with inauthentic content. Our findings could be useful for investigating external-facing communication of other online social movements, which have become increasingly prevalent.
Commonly attributed smart home challenges for both primary and secondary users have been researched extensively, yet there is a gap in understanding mental models and their influence on how both types of users internalize and domesticate smart home lighting systems including bulbs, lamps, smart plugs, switches, and presence sensors. Our study targets the perceptual distinction between both users from a long-term domestication perspective. We conducted an in-situ ethnographic study with 12 households in the Netherlands and a subsequent online survey with 93 participants. Our research offers three contributions. By analyzing guided diaries, interviews, and surveys, we characterize the intricate mental models (spatial, contextual, functional, and metaphorical mapping) within and across households. Second, we addressed the distinctiveness and importance of the post-domestication phase in smart home lighting systems. Lastly, we present design recommendations to improve future smart home system designs aimed at long-term, evolving use.
The challenges faced by individuals with visual impairments during severe weather events are poorly understood by the fields of risk communication and crisis informatics. To develop a stronger foundation for HCI research and design in this area, we conducted interviews with adults with varying forms of visual impairment about their recent experiences during weather emergencies and the role of digital technologies in supporting actions related to disaster preparedness and safety. We make three arguments to help orient future work. First, despite the challenges involved, efforts to improve risk communication for this audience must account for the social and infrastructural contexts that shape individuals' embodied experiences of severe weather. Furthermore, risk communication efforts must carefully balance interventions aimed at supporting recipient independence with collective or social strategies to support the goals of disability justice. Second, we suggest the potential for risk communications to nurture interdependent networks of information sharing and support. Finally, we identify the opportunity to reframe longstanding assumptions regarding the forms of uncertainty that designers should attend to as part of efforts to improve severe weather risk communication.
People with visual impairments (PwVI) increasingly rely on digital navigation tools to travel independently, yet these tools misalign with the lived realities of navigating unpredictable urban environments, especially during severe weather events. Drawing on a journey mapping workshop, we explore how PwVI combine mobile apps, Orientation and Mobility (O\&M) training, and human assistance to build flexible routines that adapt to recurrent disruptions, and prioritize predictability, safety, and confidence over speed. We argue that digital navigation technologies should support resilience through considering interoperability and designing for routine breakdown and multiple temporalities. We further articulate critical design considerations to better align accessible navigation with the everyday practices of PwVI.