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social impact teams

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Human computer interaction needs plural views on justice

Mapping justice as a plural and contested concept in human--computer interaction

Abstract: Human-computer interaction increasingly studies and promotes justice. Often, this work does not treat justice through a pluralistic lens Justice, however, is not one thing: political philosophy offers several well-established, mutually incompatible conceptions of it. To navigate these meanings, we draw on a map of justice, a philosophical framework identifying six distinct conceptions of justice situated throughout (Western) philosophical thought. We apply this framework to four cases that illustrate different approaches to social justice: the COMPAS system, food democracy, gentrification, and robotics. Our analysis shows that each case already reflects a position on the map, but more importantly, one might adapt the case to other conceptions as well, leading to very different systems and analyses. We discuss how HCI might engage more carefully with such contested concepts, and warn that without pluralistic understanding, academic discourse risks a spiral of silence.

Mon 14 SeptHuman-Computer Interaction
The gist
Justice means different things to different people, but often technology studies treat it as if it were just one idea. The authors explain six different ways to think about justice drawn from philosophy. They show how these views apply differently to technologies like crime risk scores, food access, neighborhood changes, and robots. They warn that not recognizing these different views can silence important discussions in computer science.
Open 2609.15426v1