Tackling Online Empathy Deficits: Exploration of New Methods with Humanities and Social Scientific Concepts

Online empathy deficits are commonly found in social media interactions, where users frequently encounter arguments, misunderstandings, and abuses caused by low interpersonal empathy. This workshop explores a new method of harnessing humanities/social scientific concepts to tackle online empathy deficits and enhance design processes. Phenomena of online empathy deficits are accelerated and amplified by the interactional affordances of social media platforms, where designers can intervene, such as with targeted innovations on interface features (visible) or algorithmic infrastructures (invisible). The workshop sensitizes participants to a series of conceptual resources from psychological science, communications studies, and philosophy through playful activities and design tools, and guides participants towards fresh perspectives and techniques of creative ideation in designing for empathy. Participants will attempt to creatively apply the newly gained conceptual resources, while reflecting on how unforeseen design opportunities may be found with a combination of new conceptual resources and pre-existing design practices. Through this interdisciplinary process, participants will begin to develop methods for harnessing new and unfamiliar humanities/social scientific conceptual resources, without having to become a specialist in the external domains. This workshop will be held fully online, and is suitable for a broad range of participants, including design researchers (in HCD, interaction design, value sensitive design, design justice, persuasive technology, emotive design, and related fields), industry practitioners (e.g. social media platform technologists), and humanities scholars / social scientists interested in engaging with design.