Between the Lines: Reevaluating the Online/Offline Binary

2015. Sarah Vieweg, Oliver Haimson, Michael Massimi, Kenton O'Hara & Elizabeth Churchill
Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems.

Abstract

Scholarly debate within the HCI community has acknowledged that the concepts of "online" and "offline" are merely handy descriptors for different environments and contexts. However, when it comes to designing technologies, this binary is still frequently invoked In this workshop, our goal is to address what issues arise when we invoke this binary uncritically, and how we can better understand people's everyday experiences of their on- and offline self-representations and interactions. When, how and why do people invoke or exploit notions of online versus offline? When does this notional "seam" dissolve? We will articulate a broadened agenda for understanding behavior across contexts. We aim to continue and update discussions of on- and offline with a deeper focus on people's practices and experiences around the creation and maintenance of a sense of "self" and identity and discuss designers' and developers' roles and responsibilities in enabling and supporting those practices.

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Citation

Vieweg, S., Haimson, O. L., Massimi, M., O'Hara, K., & Churchill, E. F. (2015). Between the lines: reevaluating the online/offline binary. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 2337–2340). New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/2702613.2702635, doi:10.1145/2702613.2702635

BibTeX

@inproceedings{10.1145/2702613.2702635,
author = {Vieweg, Sarah and Haimson, Oliver L. and Massimi, Michael and O'Hara, Kenton and Churchill, Elizabeth F.},
title = {Between the Lines: Reevaluating the Online/Offline Binary},
year = {2015},
isbn = {9781450331463},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/2702613.2702635},
doi = {10.1145/2702613.2702635},
abstract = {Scholarly debate within the HCI community has acknowledged that the concepts of "online" and "offline" are merely handy descriptors for different environments and contexts. However, when it comes to designing technologies, this binary is still frequently invoked In this workshop, our goal is to address what issues arise when we invoke this binary uncritically, and how we can better understand people's everyday experiences of their on- and offline self-representations and interactions. When, how and why do people invoke or exploit notions of online versus offline? When does this notional "seam" dissolve? We will articulate a broadened agenda for understanding behavior across contexts. We aim to continue and update discussions of on- and offline with a deeper focus on people's practices and experiences around the creation and maintenance of a sense of "self" and identity and discuss designers' and developers' roles and responsibilities in enabling and supporting those practices.},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
pages = {2337–2340},
numpages = {4},
keywords = {identity, offline, online},
location = {Seoul, Republic of Korea},
series = {CHI EA '15}
}