About Me

My research field is human-computer interaction and social computing. I study video-sharing and its collaborative and community activities on social media. I analyze extensive video data to examine the emerging interactions surrounding user-generated videos and creator-fan relationships. I use machine learning, natural language processing, and crowdsourcing to reveal video patterns and video-sharing platforms' roles and affordances. My research explores the possibilities of using online videos to support mental health, social and emotional well-being, and awareness of social justice issues.
Before joining Clark, I obtained my Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Virginia Tech. My advisor was Dr. Scott McCrickard. I was a member of Center for Human-Computer Interaction

News

  • Jan 2023

    Our paper "A Literature Review of Video-Sharing Platform Research in HCI" is accepted at CHI23.

  • Dec 2022

    I received NEBHE’s North Star Collective Faculty Fellowship

  • Dec 2022

    Our workshop "Building Credibility, Trust, and Safety on Video-Sharing Platforms" is accepted at CHI23.

  • Sept 2022

    I am serving as the Meta Co-Chair for CSCW23

  • Aug 2022

    One paper on drug-addiction videos on YouTube has been accepted by CSCW'22. One poster on hate ideology videos accepted at CSCW'22.

  • Jul 2022

    One poster paper about how people with disabilities disclose difficulties on YouTube has been accepted at ASSETS '22.

  • May 2022

    I successfully received the midterm reappointment as Assistant Professor.

  • Feb 2022

    Our paper "Close-up and Whispering: An Understanding of Multimodal and Parasocial Interactions in YouTube ASMR videos" accepted by CHI2022.

  • Jan 2022

    My proposal "Integrating Design for Diversity (D4D) Concepts in Computer Science Curriculum" receives the Academic Innovation Fund from Clark University

  • July 2021

    One full paper and two poster papers on YouTube #TeamTrees, ASMR videos and drug addiction videos accepted by CSCW2021.

Projects

Recent projects

Racism and Racial Movements on Video-sharing Platforms

This project consists of multiple ongoing projects examining how video creators present both good and bad racial-related content on video-sharing platforms. We are studying (1) how hate ideology groups use YouTube, (2) how #BLM and #STOPAAPIHATE is discussed on YouTube, and (3) how creators feel about the favoritism or racism of YouTube.
CSCW22 Poster

How People with Disabilities Disclose Dificulties on YouTube

Video-sharing platforms such as Youtube are increasingly used by people with disabilities (PWDs) to share their experiences and concerns in their lives. This analyzes YouTubers with vision, speech, mobility, hearing, and cognitive disabilities to understand how PWDs disclose technology, social, system, and environment challenges.
ASSETS22 Poster

Drug Addiction Discourse on YouTube

Drug addiction has become one of the most severe social problems in the United States. We found that YouTubers leverage videos to disclose personal addiction experiences, provide professional recommendations, and express addiction-related opinions and lifestyles.
CSCW22 Paper CSCW21 Poster

Multimodal Interactions and Parasocial Attractiveness in ASMR Videos

Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) videos have become a popular video genre on YouTube and attracted millions of views every day. This work presents a typology to understand the multimodal interactions and parasocial attractiveness in YouTube ASMR videos.
CHI22 Paper CSCW21 Poster

How Do YouTubers Create Videos for COVID-19 Loneliness

Loneliness threatens public mental well-being during COVID-19 isolation. YouTube creators responded to the call of #StayHome #WithMe movement and made myriad videos for people who feel lonely or bored at home. Grounded on Weiss's loneliness theory, this work analyzed 1488 SHWM videos to examine video-sharing as a pathway to social provisions.
CHI21 Paper Video

How YouTubers Participate in a Social Media Campaign

YouTube is not only a platform for content creators to share videos but also a virtual venue for hosting community activities, such as social media campaigns (SMCs). This study also looks into whether platform identities and framing activities affect campaign reach and engagement.
CSCW21 Paper Video

Past projects

co-located sensemaking
Investigating Paradigms of Group Territory in Multiple Display Environments
Multiple-display environments (MDEs) have promise in helping co-located sensemaking tasks by supporting searching, organizing, and discussion tasks. This paper empirically examines exploration of a large Twitter dataset using three group territory paradigms: parallel, connected, and merged.
PDF
co-located sensemaking
Investigating notifications and awareness for multi-user multi-touch tabletop displays
Notifications seek to guide people’s attention toward timely, relevant, and important tasks and interactions. This paper presents a framework for notifications in a multi-user multi-touch context. The framework is explored for a card-sorting task performed by two people (a participant and a scripted confederate) on a shared tabletop display.
PDF
co-located sensemaking
An Observational Study of Simultaneous and Sequential Interactions in Co-located Collaboration
Large-scale multi-touch displays provide highly interactive spaces for small group activities. This paper explores two types of interaction, simultaneous and sequential, with regard to how people engage in shared virtual space during a collaborative ideation task.
PDF
co-located sensemaking
Tongue-able interfaces: Prototyping and evaluating camera based tongue gesture input system
Tongue-computer interaction techniques create a new pathway between human mind and computer, with particular utility for people with upper limb impairment. This paper introduces a new interaction technique, camera-based tongue computer interface (CBTCI), which employs tongue without any direct physical contact required.
PDF

Publications

Journals and Conference Papers

  1. Ava Bartolome and Shuo Niu. 2023. A Literature Review of Video-Sharing Platform Research in HCI. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’23), Paper
  2. Shuo Niu, Kathy G. McKim, and Katherleen Palm Reed,(2022). Education, Personal Experiences, and Advocacy: Examining Drug-Addiction Videos on YouTube. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact., 5(CSCW2). Paper
  3. Shuo Niu, Hugh S. Manon, Ava Bartolome, Nguyen B. Ha, and Keegan Veazey. 2022. Close-up and Whispering: An Understanding of Multimodal and Parasocial Interactions in YouTube ASMR videos. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’22), April 29-May 5, 2022, New Orleans, LA, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 18 pages. https://doi.org/10. 1145/3491102.3517563 Paper
  4. Shuo Niu, Cat Mai, Katherine G. McKim, and D. Scott McCrickard. 2021. #TeamTrees: Investigating How YouTubers Participate in a Social Media Campaign. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 5, CSCW2, Article 449 (October 2021), 26 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3479593 Paper
  5. Shuo Niu, Ava Bartolome, Cat Mai, and Nguyen B. Ha. 2021. #StayHome #WithMe: How Do YouTubers Help with COVID-19 Loneliness?. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’21), May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 15 pages. https://doi.org/ 10.1145/3411764.3445397 Paper
  6. Shuo Niu, D. Scott McCrickard, Julia Nguyen, Derek Haqq, Lindah Kotut, Timothy L. Stelter, and Edward A. Fox. 2020. Investigating Paradigms of Group Territory in Multiple Display Environments. In GROUP ’20: ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP), January 06–08, 2020, Sanibel Island, FL. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 28 pages. Paper
  7. Shuo Niu, D. Scott McCrickard, Timothy L. Stelter, Alan Dix, and G. Don Taylor. 2019. "Reorganize Your Blogs: Supporting Blog Re-visitation with Natural Language Processing and Visualization." Multimodal Technologies and Interaction 3, no. 4 (2019): 66. Paper
  8. Shuo Niu, D. Scott McCrickard, and Steve Harrison. "Investigating Notifications and Awareness for Multi-user Multi-touch Tabletop Displays." In Proc. of INTERACT 2017, Mumbai, India, 2017 Paper
  9. Shuo Niu, D. Scott McCrickard, and Steve Harrison. "An Observational Study of Simultaneous and Sequential Interactions in Co-located Collaboration." In Proc. of INTERACT 2017, Mumbai, India, 2017 Paper
  10. Shuo Niu, D. Scott McCrickard, and Sophia M. Nguyen. "Learning with interactive tabletop displays." In Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 2016 IEEE, pp. 1-9. IEEE, 2016.
  11. Shuo Niu, Li Liu, D. Scott McCrickard, Tongue-able Interfaces: Prototyping and Evaluating Camera Based Tongue Gesture Input System, Smart Health, Available online 12 March 2018, ISSN 2352-6483
  12. Mohammed Seyam, D. Scott McCrickard, Shuo Niu, Andrey Esakia, and Woongsup Kim. "Teaching mobile application development through lectures, interactive tutorials, and Pair Programming." In Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), 2016 IEEE, pp. 1-9. IEEE, 2016.
  13. D. Scott McCrickard, Troy D. Abel, Angela Scarpa, Yao Wang, and Shuo Niu. "Collaborative design for young children with autism: Design tools and a user study." In Collaboration Technologies and Systems (CTS), 2015 International Conference on, pp. 175-182. IEEE, 2015.
  14. Shuo Niu, D. Scott McCrickard, and Steve Harrison. "Exploring humanoid factors of robots through transparent and reflective interactions." In Collaboration Technologies and Systems (CTS), 2015 International Conference on, pp. 47-54. IEEE, 2015.
  15. Xuan Zhang, Shuo Niu, Da Zhang, G. Alan Wang, and Weiguo Fan. "Predicting Vehicle Recalls with User-Generated Contents: A Text Mining Approach." In Pacific-Asia Workshop on Intelligence and Security Informatics, pp. 41-50. Springer International Publishing, 2015.
  16. Andrey Esakia, Shuo Niu, and D. Scott McCrickard. "Augmenting undergraduate computer science education with programmable smartwatches." In Proceedings of the 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, pp. 66-71. ACM, 2015.

Short Papers, Workshop Papers, and Posters

  1. Shuo Niu, Keegan Veazey, Phoenix Pagan, and Abhisan Ghimire. "Understanding Hate Group Videos on YouTube." In Companion Publication of the 2022 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, pp. 32-36. 2022. Paper
  2. Shuo Niu, Jaime Garcia, Summayah Waseem, and Li Liu. "Investigating How People with Disabilities Disclose Difficulties on YouTube." In The 24th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, pp. 1-5. 2022. Paper
  3. Ava Bartolome, Nguyen B. Ha, and Shuo Niu. 2021. Investigating Multimodal Interactions and Parasocial Attractiveness in YouTube ASMR Videos. In Companion Publication of the 2021 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW ’21 Companion), October 23–27, 2021, Virtual Event, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 5 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3462204.3481763 Paper
  4. Katherine G. McKim, Cat Mai, Danielle Hess, and Shuo Niu. 2021. Investigating Drug Addiction Discourse on YouTube. In Companion Publication of the 2021 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW ’21 Companion), October 23–27, 2021, Virtual Event, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 5 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3462204.3481762
  5. Shuo Niu, Andrey Esakia, and Scott McCrickard. "Exploring Computer Science Topics with Programmable Smartwatches." In Proceedings of the 46th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, pp. 440-440. ACM, 2015.
  6. Shuo Niu, Li Liu, and D. Scott McCrickard. "Tongue-able interfaces: evaluating techniques for a camera based tongue gesture input system." In Proceedings of the 16th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers & accessibility, pp. 277-278. ACM, 2014.
  7. Li Liu, Shuo Niu, Jingjing Ren, and Jingyuan Zhang. "Tongible: a non-contact tongue-based interaction technique." In Proceedings of the 14th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility, pp. 233-234. ACM, 2012.

Teaching

CSci244 Web Development: The course introduces foundational web-development concepts and skills for building modern full-stack applications. This course is designed for computer science majors who already have basic programming and software engineering knowledge. The goal is to let students experience front-end and back-end development by learning essential web-programming languages, having hands-on tutorials, and building real-world applications. The course focuses on the front-end but covers basic knowledge in the back-end. The course covers internet basics, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, RESTful API, NodeJS, and SQL/NoSQL database. Through the course, students are expected to be able to design, develop, and deploy full-stack web applications for different use cases.

CSci245 Mobile Software Development: The primary objective of this course is to teach how to provide software-based mobile solutions to complex problems for mobile devices. The course focuses on twelve main modules that are unique to mobile computing: Intro to Mobile Programming, Mobile GUI, Activity and Fragment, Navigation, Architecture Components, Internet and Database, Cloud Computing, Background Processing, Media and Animation, Sensors and Location, and Touch and Camera. Other advanced topics such as mobile VR and smartwatch will also be introduced. Through this course, students are expected to be able to design and develop mobile applications for different use cases, with chances to practice solving real-world problems with mobile solutions. This semester's course focuses on the Android development platform, based on the Android development language - Kotlin. The course will focus primarily on the mobile phone platform, with development opportunities for tablets, Android TV, and wearables.

DSci125 Intro to Data Science: The course introduces foundational statistical and computational concepts and skills in data-centered computing and applications. It provides a toolkit of data processing and analysis methods and techniques, with hands-on opportunities for students to handle real-world datasets and extract information and knowledge from the data. The course covers data representations in Python, visualizing data, statistics and probability, data gathering and processing, intro to machine learning, regression, big data, and data ethics. Social issues surrounding data science, such as data privacy, bias, fairness, and social impacts, will also be discussed.

CSci120 Intro to Computing: Develops computational problem-solving skills through programming, and exposes students to a variety of other topics from computer science and its applications. The focus of the course is to learn fundamental computational concepts (information, algorithms, abstraction, and programming) that are central to computer science, and that also happen to be instrumental for the computational investigation of science. Design, analysis, and testing of problem-solving techniques are applied to a variety of domains across the sciences and liberal arts. This is the first course for computer science majors and anyone seeking a rigorous introduction. No prior knowledge of programming is required, but good analytical skills are helpful.

Data Structures and Algorithms: Advanced data structures and analysis of data structure and algorithm performance. Sorting, searching, hashing, and advanced tree structures and algorithms. File system organization and access methods. Created course materials for lectures, assignments, demos, and exams. Utilized visualization tools and animations to explain key algorithms.