Eshwar Chandrasekharan

About

Eshwar Chandrasekharan is an Assistant Professor at The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research intersects with Social Computing, Computational Social Science, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. He studies how technology influences what people create, curate, and consume online, focusing on building technologies to make the Internet safer and more welcoming. His recent work involves using a combination of computational techniques and social computing theories to address issues related to online safety and inclusivity.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Political Science
• Social Science
• Internet privacy
• Computer Security
• World Wide Web
• Data science
• Psychology

Selected publications

• Quarantined! Examining the Effects of a Community-Wide Moderation Intervention on Reddit

  ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction · 2022 · 128 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  Should social media platforms override a community’s self-policing when it repeatedly break rules? What actions can they consider? In light of this debate, platforms have begun experimenting with softer alternatives to outright bans. We examine one such intervention called quarantining, that impedes direct access to and promotion of controversial communities. Specifically, we present two case studies of what happened when Reddit quarantined the influential communities r/TheRedPill (TRP) and r/Th…

  PublisherDOI

• Still out there: Modeling and Identifying Russian Troll Accounts on Twitter

  2020 · 85 citations

  There is evidence that Russia’s Internet Research Agency attempted to interfere with the 2016 U.S. election by running fake accounts on Twitter—often referred to as “Russian trolls”. In this work, we: 1) develop machine learning models that predict whether a Twitter account is a Russian troll within a set of 170K control accounts; and, 2) demonstrate that it is possible to use this model to find active accounts on Twitter still likely acting on behalf of the Russian state. Using both behavioral…

  DOI

• "Positive reinforcement helps breed positive behavior": Moderator Perspectives on Encouraging Desirable Behavior

  Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · 2024-11-07 · 9 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The role of a moderator is often characterized as solely punitive, however, moderators have the power to not only execute reactive and punitive actions but also create norms and support the values they want to see within their communities. One way moderators can proactively foster healthy communities is through positive reinforcement, but we do not currently know whether moderators on Reddit enforce their norms by providing positive feedback to desired contributions. To fill this gap in our know…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Opportunities, tensions, and challenges in computational approaches to addressing online harassment

  Designing Interactive Systems Conference · 2024-06-29 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  Given the scale at which online harassment occurs, researchers and practitioners alike have turned to computationally driven approaches to address it. However, because harassment is highly contextual and personal, designing effective solutions to this problem can be extremely challenging. This paper examines how harassment-mitigation systems studied in human-computer interaction (HCI) consider victim-centered principles in their design. Through a scoping literature review and close reading of 17…

  PublisherDOI

• What's in a Social Computing Course: Analyzing Computer and Information Science Syllabi

  2024-05-29 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Social computing systems—such as social media and e-commerce platforms as well as search engines and collaboration software— not only drive vast economic value and societal impact, but are also becoming prominent topics in policy discourse. Although social technology companies heavily recruit students from Computer and Information Science (CS and IS) programs, and social computing is a well-established scholarly field within human-computer interaction (HCI) focused on the social interactions bet…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Éric Gilbert

  14 shared

• Charlotte Lambert

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  7 shared

• Stevie Chancellor

  University of Minnesota

  6 shared

• Tanvi Bajpai

  6 shared

• Koustuv Saha

  Microsoft Research (United Kingdom)

  6 shared

• David Jurgens

  6 shared

• Amy Bruckman

  5 shared

• Frederick D. S. Choi

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  5 shared

Awards & honors

• NSF CAREER Award

Similar researchers at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• David Ceperleyh-95
• Gordon Baymh-81
• Narendra Ahujah-75