Nov. 12 Webinar: ‘Increasing Participation in Democracy with Social Computing’ | Office of News & Media Relations

The School of Pc and Data Sciences (CICS) lecture sequence, “Computing & Social Justice” program continues on Thursday, Nov. 12 from 4 to five:30 p.m. with a web-based webinar presentation and Q&A session by Narges Mahyar, an assistant professor of pc science with analysis pursuits in human-computer interplay, social computing and crowdsourcing, amongst others. She’s going to talk about such methods as CommunityClick and others that goal to diversify public engagement in policy-making.

Attendance is free and open to the general public however registration is required.

Mahyar factors out that whereas the nation grapples with a contentious election, partisan governance and social division and inequality, pundits warn that participative democracy is underneath menace. Additional, native governments rely upon conventional city halls for group session, regardless of issues resembling a scarcity of inclusive participation for attendees, and problem in capturing attendee suggestions. She’s going to discover whether or not social computing instruments can facilitate a extra inclusive, sturdy democracy that engages various views in policy-making.

In an award-winning paper introduced final month at an Affiliation for Computing Equipment convention on “pc supported cooperative work and social computing,” Mahyar and her collaborators describe how CommunityClick, a field-tested community-sourcing system, makes an attempt to enhance inclusivity by offering a number of avenues for attendees to share opinions. The convention web site gives instruments for organizers who want to write complete and correct studies to tell vital civic decision-making.

At CICS, Mahyar co-directs the HCI-VIS lab, (human-computer interplay and visualization), which focuses on growing new social computing and visualization instruments to help in information evaluation, communication and exploration for real-world socio-technical issues civics, healthcare and different domains. She holds a Ph.D. in pc science from the College of Victoria, an M.S. in data expertise from the College of Malaya and a B.S. in electrical engineering from Tehran Azad College.

The Computing and Social Justice Lecture Sequence brings CICS researchers and the general public collectively to critically assess how computing innovation intersects with vitally essential points like structural bias, civic participation, financial inequality and citizen privateness.