Broadening Exposure to Socio-Political Opinions via a Pushy Smart Home Device

Tom Feltwell; Gavin Wood; Phillip Brooker; Scarlett Rowland; Eric Baumer; Kiel Long; John Vines; Julie Barnett; Shaun Lawson

doi:10.1145/3313831.3376774

Broadening Exposure to Socio-Political Opinions via a Pushy Smart Home Device

Tom Feltwell, Gavin Wood, Phillip Brooker, Scarlett Rowland, Eric Baumer, Kiel Long, John Vines, Julie Barnett, Shaun Lawson

Computer and Information Sciences Department

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

56 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Motivated by the effects of the filter bubble and echo chamber phenomena on social media, we developed a smart home device, Spkr, that unpredictably "pushes" socio-political discussion topics into the home. The device utilised trending Twitter discussions, categorised by their socio-political alignment, to present people with a purposefully assorted range of viewpoints. We deployed Spkr in 10 homes for 28 days with a diverse range of participants and interviewed them about their experiences. Our results show that Spkr presents a novel means of combating selective exposure to socio-political issues, providing participants with identifiably diverse viewpoints. Moreover, Spkr acted as a conversational prompt for discussion within the home, initiating collective processes and engaging those who would not often be involved in political discussions. We demonstrate how smart home assistants can be used as a catalyst for provocation by altering and pluralising political discussions within households.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’20): April 25–30, 2020, Honolulu, HI, USA
Place of Publication	New York
Publisher	ACM
Pages	1-14
Number of pages	14
ISBN (Electronic)	9781450367080
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376774
Publication status	Published - 21 Apr 2020

Keywords

Nolan chart
echo chamber
filter bubble
pushy device
selective exposure
smart home technology
socio-political discussion
viewpoint diversity

Access to Document

10.1145/3313831.3376774

Feltwell-et-al-2020-BroadeningExposureCHI2020Accepted author manuscript, 604 KB

Cite this

Feltwell, T., Wood, G., Brooker, P., Rowland, S., Baumer, E., Long, K., Vines, J., Barnett, J., & Lawson, S. (2020). Broadening Exposure to Socio-Political Opinions via a Pushy Smart Home Device. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’20): April 25–30, 2020, Honolulu, HI, USA (pp. 1-14). Article 3376774 ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376774

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title = "Broadening Exposure to Socio-Political Opinions via a Pushy Smart Home Device",

abstract = "Motivated by the effects of the filter bubble and echo chamber phenomena on social media, we developed a smart home device, Spkr, that unpredictably {"}pushes{"} socio-political discussion topics into the home. The device utilised trending Twitter discussions, categorised by their socio-political alignment, to present people with a purposefully assorted range of viewpoints. We deployed Spkr in 10 homes for 28 days with a diverse range of participants and interviewed them about their experiences. Our results show that Spkr presents a novel means of combating selective exposure to socio-political issues, providing participants with identifiably diverse viewpoints. Moreover, Spkr acted as a conversational prompt for discussion within the home, initiating collective processes and engaging those who would not often be involved in political discussions. We demonstrate how smart home assistants can be used as a catalyst for provocation by altering and pluralising political discussions within households.",

keywords = "Nolan chart, echo chamber, filter bubble, pushy device, selective exposure, smart home technology, socio-political discussion, viewpoint diversity",

author = "Tom Feltwell and Gavin Wood and Phillip Brooker and Scarlett Rowland and Eric Baumer and Kiel Long and John Vines and Julie Barnett and Shaun Lawson",

note = "Funding information: Thank you to David Verweij for his help fabricating the Spkr enclosures, and CereProc for access to their CereVoice API. This work was supported by the grant ES/M003574/1 {"}CuRAtOR: Challenging online feaR And OtheRing{"}. It was also supported by the EPSRC DERC grant EP/M023001/1. Data underpinning this paper is available from the authors.",

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doi = "10.1145/3313831.3376774",

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Feltwell, T, Wood, G, Brooker, P, Rowland, S, Baumer, E, Long, K, Vines, J, Barnett, J & Lawson, S 2020, Broadening Exposure to Socio-Political Opinions via a Pushy Smart Home Device. in Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’20): April 25–30, 2020, Honolulu, HI, USA., 3376774, ACM, New York, pp. 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376774

Broadening Exposure to Socio-Political Opinions via a Pushy Smart Home Device. / Feltwell, Tom; Wood, Gavin; Brooker, Phillip et al.
Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’20): April 25–30, 2020, Honolulu, HI, USA. New York: ACM, 2020. p. 1-14 3376774.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › peer-review

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AU - Wood, Gavin

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AU - Rowland, Scarlett

AU - Baumer, Eric

AU - Long, Kiel

AU - Vines, John

AU - Barnett, Julie

AU - Lawson, Shaun

N1 - Funding information: Thank you to David Verweij for his help fabricating the Spkr enclosures, and CereProc for access to their CereVoice API. This work was supported by the grant ES/M003574/1 "CuRAtOR: Challenging online feaR And OtheRing". It was also supported by the EPSRC DERC grant EP/M023001/1. Data underpinning this paper is available from the authors.

PY - 2020/4/21

Y1 - 2020/4/21

N2 - Motivated by the effects of the filter bubble and echo chamber phenomena on social media, we developed a smart home device, Spkr, that unpredictably "pushes" socio-political discussion topics into the home. The device utilised trending Twitter discussions, categorised by their socio-political alignment, to present people with a purposefully assorted range of viewpoints. We deployed Spkr in 10 homes for 28 days with a diverse range of participants and interviewed them about their experiences. Our results show that Spkr presents a novel means of combating selective exposure to socio-political issues, providing participants with identifiably diverse viewpoints. Moreover, Spkr acted as a conversational prompt for discussion within the home, initiating collective processes and engaging those who would not often be involved in political discussions. We demonstrate how smart home assistants can be used as a catalyst for provocation by altering and pluralising political discussions within households.

AB - Motivated by the effects of the filter bubble and echo chamber phenomena on social media, we developed a smart home device, Spkr, that unpredictably "pushes" socio-political discussion topics into the home. The device utilised trending Twitter discussions, categorised by their socio-political alignment, to present people with a purposefully assorted range of viewpoints. We deployed Spkr in 10 homes for 28 days with a diverse range of participants and interviewed them about their experiences. Our results show that Spkr presents a novel means of combating selective exposure to socio-political issues, providing participants with identifiably diverse viewpoints. Moreover, Spkr acted as a conversational prompt for discussion within the home, initiating collective processes and engaging those who would not often be involved in political discussions. We demonstrate how smart home assistants can be used as a catalyst for provocation by altering and pluralising political discussions within households.

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PB - ACM

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Broadening Exposure to Socio-Political Opinions via a Pushy Smart Home Device

Abstract

Keywords

Access to Document

Other files and links

CuRAtOR: Challenging online feaR And OtheRing (transfer)

Cite this

Broadening Exposure to Socio-Political Opinions via a Pushy Smart Home Device

Abstract

Keywords

Access to Document

Other files and links

Projects

CuRAtOR: Challenging online feaR And OtheRing (transfer)

Cite this