Matt kicked off the Science of Community track on Friday, August 1st, discussing his current research on how the recent growth of sponsored open source libraries (projects stewarded by large, formally incorporated organizations) provides new organization relationships and processes to better understand FOSS libraries organized as communities of volunteer contributors.
(Matt’s talk starts at 16:30 and ends at 45:51).
This is the first of our 12 part series sharing highlights from the Science of Community track at FOSSY 2025. Visit the FOSSY site for bio details and a full abstract [https://2025.fossy.us/schedule/presentation/350/].
Let the countdown begin! FOSSY 2025 begins next week July 31st through August 3rd. We’ll be there, running the Science of Community track on Friday, August 1st and Saturday August 2nd.
The Science of Community track is inspired by the CDSC Science of Community Dialogues, which aim to bring together practitioners and researchers to discuss scholarly work that is relevant to the efforts of practitioners. As researchers, we get so much from the communities we work with and study and we want them to also learn from the research they so generously take part in. While the Dialogues cover a broad range of topics and communities, FOSSY presentations focus on how that work related to free and open source software communities, projects, and practitioners.
We have a number of great presenters, including the CDSC’s very own Matt Gaughan and Dr. Kaylea Champion. You can check our full schedule below:
Tickets are still available at every price tier, check them out here.
Interested in free and open source software? Want to hear insights from researchers, community leaders, contributors, and advocates working on and with FOSS?
We will be running the Science of Community track on Friday August 1st and Saturday August 2nd. We’re excited to have a number of awesome presenters speaking about their work. You can find the schedule here.
The Science of Community track is inspired by the CDSC Science of Community Dialogues, which aim to bring together practitioners and researchers to discuss scholarly work that is relevant to the efforts of practitioners. As researchers, we get so much from the communities we work with and study and we want them to also learn from the research they so generously take part in. While the Dialogues cover a broad range of topics and communities, FOSSY presentations focus on how that work related to free and open source software communities, projects, and practitioners.
Collaborations between practitioners and researchers can be transformative! Let’s get to know each other.
Tickets are still available at every price tier, check them out here.
Below, you can find the schedule of where our CDSC members will be:
Friday
10:30 – 11:45, HIGH-DENSITY: Advances and Best Practices in Text Classification: Computational Methods. Centennial A (Regency 3) (Benjamin Mako Hill will be the Session Chair)
13:30 – 14:45, Political Communication Poster Session: Political Communication. “The Politics of the Non-Political: A Scoping Review (2004–2024)” by Yufan Guo, Chinese U of Hong Kong, and Yibin Fan, University of Washington
13:30 – 14:45, HIGH-DENSITY: GIFTS in Instructional and Developmental Communication: Instructional and Developmental Communication. “Welcome Aboard: Simulating an Outsider-Within’s Organizational Assimilation and Socialization Through Role-Play” by Mavis Akom, Purdue U, Haley Sawyer, Purdue U, Loizos Bitsikokos, Purdue U, Alyssa Reed, Purdue U, Favour Ojike, Purdue U, Pamela Boateng, Purdue U, Onyinyechi Beatrice, Purdue U, Inusah Mohammed, Purdue U, Seungyoon Lee, Purdue U
Saturday
15:00 PM – 16:15, HIGH-DENSITY: Expression and Debates in Politics: “Unintended Politics: Partisan Opinion Expression and Incivility in Incidental Political Discussion” by Yibin Fan, U of Washington, Benjamin Mako Hill, U. of Washington, Patricia Moy, U. of Washington.
Sunday
12:00 – 13:15, Organizational Communication Research Escalator. “But Have You Tried to Ignore Them?” A Cross-National Comparison of Resilience Against Gendered Cyberhate in India and the USA by Bedadyuti Jha, Purdue U and Jeremy Foote, Purdue U.
15:00 – 16:15, Intergroup Communication Top Papers. Effects of Racial Minority Language Use on the Conversational Sustenance of Online Discussions by Haomin Lin, University of Washington, and Wang Liao, University of Washington.
Monday
10:30 – 11:45, NEKO-tiating Later Life: Digital Health, News Habits, and Tech Support: Communication and Technology. “Gig Work in Later Life: Sociodemographic and Digital Determinants of Older Adults’ Participation” by Floor Fiers, U of Amsterdam, Will Marler, Tilburg U, and Eszter Hargittai, U of Zurich.
Also, congratulations to Dr. Kaylea Champion, as her dissertation, “Social and Technical Sources of Risk in Sustaining Digital Infrastructure,” will be given the 2025 Annie Lang Dissertation Award from the International Communication Association Information Systems Division. The award will be given out at the ICA 2025 Information Systems business meeting 16:30 – 17:45 in Granite (Regency 3). Kaylea’s dissertation also received the 2025 Faculty Award for Outstanding Research Ph.D. Dissertation Award from the Department of Communication University of Washington. You can read more about Kaylea and her research on her homepage here.
Congrats to our CDSC folks on their accomplishments, and have safe travels to Denver this weekend!
Does your work touch open source, communities, technology, or cooperation? Do you want to help bridge the gaps between research and practice? Join us at FOSSY! The Free and Open Source Software Yearly conference (FOSSY) is back this summer and the call for proposals is open!
“I always enjoy the blend of researcher and contributor perspectives in the Science of Community track. The presentations are always great, surpassed only by the follow up conversations in the hall afterwards!” – Matt Gaughan, CDSC member and PhD student
We’ll be running the Science of Community track, and are looking for presenters to speak to an audience of FOSS practitioners, developers, community organizers, contributors, and people just generally into and curious about FOSS.
The Science of Community track is inspired by the CDSC Science of Community Dialogues, which bring together practitioners and researchers to discuss scholarly work that is relevant to the efforts of practitioners. As researchers, we benefit so much from the communities we work with and study and we want them to also learn from the research they so generously take part in. While the Dialogues cover a broad range of topics and communities, FOSSY presentations will focus on how that work relates to free and open source software communities, projects, and practitioners.
FOSSY is a low-stress opportunity to talk to people who your work can benefit. For topics, consider presenting implications from past papers, synthesizing work from your field overall, or floating ideas and problems (lightning talks! long talks! short talks!). A full track description and answers to common questions is available on our wiki.
The CFP deadline is April 28th and uses this form.
We held our 11th Science of Community Dialogue on April 4th, with Zarine Kharazian (University of Washington) and Professor Paul Gowder (Northwestern University) sharing their research on misinformation and propaganda in online communities, limitations of approaches that neglect community governance, and insights on democratizing platforms and society.
Zarine kicked off the conversation by highlighting recent events regarding allegations and attacks on Wikipedia, and how these legitimacy attacks affect communities engagement with encyclopedic knowledge and collective sense-making infrastructures. She explored organizational and institutional approaches that could enable communities to effectively steward information commons in the face of these attacks.
In his book The Networked Leviathan, Paul advocated for more participatory and multi-level governance as a corrective to the “democratic deficit” and lack of accountability of social media platforms. In this dialogue, he discussed threats and updates to this framework in light of recent developments.
Thank you to everyone who joined us and participated in this insightful and timely conversation. We greatly appreciate Zarine and Paul taking the time to share their views and research on community governance.
Join the Community Data Science Collective (CDSC) for our 11th Science of Community Dialogue! This Community Dialogue will take place on April 4th at 12:00 pm CT. This Dialogue focuses on resisting online information manipulation and the role of community governance. Professor Paul Gowder (Northwestern University) will join Zarine Kharazian (University of Washington) to present recent research on topics including:
Exploring threats like misinformation and propaganda in online communities.
Limitations of approaches that neglect community governance.
Tradeoffs in governance models, such as those of Facebook, Bluesky, and Wikipedia.
The Community Data Science Collective (CDSC) is an interdisciplinary research group made of up of faculty and students at the University of Washington Department of Communication, the Northwestern University Department of Communication Studies, the Carleton College Computer Science Department, the School of Information at UT Austin, and the Purdue University School of Communication.
Learn more
If you’d like to learn more or get future updates about the Science of Community Dialogues, please join the low volume announcement list.
On Oct. 23, 2024, Dr. Yoel Roth gave a lecture titled as “Decentralizing online safety and security: The promises and perils of federated social media” hosted by the Department of Human-Centered Design and Engineering at University of Washington, and a number of CDSC faculty and students were present and discussed issues of digital governance with Dr. Roth.
Years of dedicated research, activism, regulatory efforts, and investment by civil society and technology companies have increased awareness and established some control over the harmful impacts of social media platforms. Today, as social media undergoes its most significant transformation in over a decade—with alternative platforms like Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads gaining traction in the wake of Twitter’s decline—there is optimism about these new platforms and their potential for alternative governance models that offer users greater empowerment. Dr. Roth has highlighted how self-organizing practices in these emerging communities are constructing norms for content moderation in decentralized platforms, which resonates with a number of research conducted by our research group (see Colglazier, TeBlunthuis, & Shaw, 2024).
However, these platforms retain many of the same design features and risks for misuse as mainstream platforms, yet lack the robust moderation and detection systems that have been painstakingly developed elsewhere. Additionally, significant technological, governance, and financial challenges hinder the development of these essential safeguards. Drawing on empirical research into platform moderation capacities, Dr. Roth examines the complex outcomes of this transformation in social media and suggests the following potential solutions for collective safety and addressing security risks identified: (1) institutionalize shared responses to critical harms, (2) build transparent governance into the system, (3) invest in open-source tooling, and (4) enable data sharing across instances (Roth & Lai, 2024).
References
Colglazier, C., TeBlunthuis, N., & Shaw, A. (2024, May). The Effects of Group Sanctions on Participation and Toxicity: Quasi-experimental Evidence from the Fediverse. In Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (Vol. 18, pp. 315-328).Roth, Y., & Lai, S. (2024). Securing federated platforms: Collective risks and responses. Journal of Online Trust and Safety, 2(2).
Missed the prospective student Q&A session? Fear not, you can still hear from our faculty members, see a few examples of current students research, and listen to answers for our prospective student audience.
You can find more resources about the Community Data Science Collective below:
On September 27th, we held our 9th Science of Community Dialogue with Sohyeon Hwang (Northwestern) and Seth Frey (University of California-Davis) sharing their research and insights on how communities self-govern amidst competing pressures in complex, multi-layered environments.
Sohyeon presented her work on “Trust and Friction: Community Governance and Privacy on Decentralized Social Media”. Her research aimed to answer the questions of “what aspects of community governance do communities use to shape privacy expectations?” and “how does the decentralized nature of that platform aid or undermine those expectations?”
Seth discussed his research on Apache, looking to answer the question “do things run the way they say they run?” His research explored the relationships between rules and regulations, how often these same rules as discussed among the community, and what exactly is being governed.
All in all, it was a wonderful dialogue and we greatly appreciate Sohyeon and Seth taking the time to share their research, as well as all our attendees joining us for a great discussion.
