Publications

How Conversational Structure and Style Shape Online Community Experiences

Galen Weld, Carl Pearson, Bradley Spahn, Tim Althoff, Amy X. Zhang, Sanjay Kairam

ICWSM 2026 (2026)

An analysis of how conversational structure and style relate to sense of community in online spaces, using large-scale behavioral and survey data from Reddit.

Ranking by Engagement and Non-Engagement Signals: Learnings from Industry

Tom Cunningham, Sana Pandey, Leif Sigerson, Jonathan Stray, Jeff Allen, Bonnie Barrilleaux, Ravi Iyer, Sanjay Kairam, Mohit Kothari, Smitha Milli, Monica Nyre-Yu, Behnam Rezaei, Sarah Thew, Ehsan Toreini, Bjarke Mønsted

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 2025 (2025)

A cross-industry analysis of engagement and non-engagement signals used in content ranking systems.

Post Guidance for Online Communities

Manoel Horta Ribeiro, Robert West, Ryan Lewis, Sanjay Kairam

CSCW 2025 (2025)

A novel approach to community moderation that proactively guides users' contributions using rules that trigger interventions as users draft posts.

Welcome to the Neighborhood: Assessing Localized Social Media Use and Pro-Community Attitudes in a Multi-National Survey

Marianne Aubin Le Quéré, Sanjay Kairam

Social Media + Society 2025 (2025)

A multi-national survey examining the relationship between localized social media use and pro-community attitudes.

How Founder Motivations, Goals, and Actions Influence Early Trajectories of Online Communities

Sanjay Kairam, Jeremy Foote

CHI 2024 (2024)

A mixed-methods study of how founder motivations, goals, and early actions shape the growth trajectories of online communities on Reddit.

Who Moderates on Twitch and What Do They Do? Quantifying Practices in Community Moderation on Twitch

Joseph Seering, Sanjay Kairam

GROUP 2023 (2023)

A large-scale quantitative study of volunteer moderation practices on Twitch, characterizing who moderates, what actions they take, and how practices vary across communities.

Practicing Moderation: Community Moderation as Reflective Practice

Amanda L. L. Cullen, Sanjay Kairam

CSCW 2022 (2022)

A qualitative study of community moderation as reflective practice, examining how volunteer moderators develop, articulate, and refine their approaches over time.

A Social-Ecological Approach to Modeling Sense of Virtual Community (SOVC) in Livestreaming Communities

Sanjay Kairam, Melissa C. Mercado, Steven A. Sumner

CSCW 2022 (2022)

A social-ecological model of sense of virtual community in Twitch livestreaming, examining individual, interpersonal, and community-level factors that predict belonging.

From Virtual Strangers to IRL Friends: Relationship Development in Livestreaming Communities on Twitch

Jeff T. Sheng, Sanjay Kairam

CSCW 2020 (2020)

A qualitative study of how personal relationships develop in Twitch livestreaming communities, from initial parasocial connections to real-life friendships.

Snap Decisions? How Users, Content, and Aesthetics Interact to Shape Photo Sharing Behaviors

Sanjay Kairam, Joseph 'Jofish' Kaye, John Alexis Guerra-Gomez, David A. Shamma

CHI 2016 (2016)

An empirical study of how user characteristics, content features, and visual aesthetics interact to shape photo sharing decisions on social platforms.

Parting Crowds: Characterizing Divergent Interpretations in Crowdsourced Annotation Tasks

Sanjay Kairam, Jeffrey Heer

CSCW 2016 (2016)

A framework for identifying and interpreting systematic disagreement in crowdsourced annotation, treating divergent labels as signal rather than noise.

Identifying Best Practices for Visualizing Photo Statistics and Galleries Using Treemaps

John A. Guerra-Gomez, Cati Boulanger, Sanjay Kairam, David A. Shamma

AVI 2016 (2016)

A controlled experiment evaluating treemap design choices for visualizing photo statistics and browsing large photo galleries.

Refinery: Visual Exploration of Large, Heterogeneous Networks through Associative Browsing

Sanjay Kairam, Nathalie Henry Riche, Steven M. Drucker, Roland Fernandez, Jeffrey Heer

EuroVis 2015 (2015)

An interactive system for exploring large, heterogeneous networks using associative browsing, enabling users to navigate semantic relationships across node types.

A Knowledge Tracing Model of Learning from a Social Tagging System

Peter Pirolli, Sanjay Kairam

UMUAI 2013 (2013)

A Bayesian knowledge tracing model applied to learning behavior in social tagging systems, modeling how users acquire expertise through social interaction.

Towards Supporting Search over Trending Events with Social Media

Sanjay Kairam, Meredith Ringel Morris, Jaime Teevan, Dan Liebling, Susan Dumais

ICWSM 2013 (2013)

An investigation of how social media can support real-time search over trending events, examining the complementary roles of search engines and social streams.

GraphPrism: Compact Visualization of Network Structure

Sanjay Kairam, Diana MacLean, Manolis Savva, Jeffrey Heer

AVI 2012 (2012)

A compact visual summary representation for large networks that enables rapid comparison of structural properties across multiple graphs.

Talking in Circles: Selective Sharing in Google+

Sanjay Kairam, Michael J. Brzozowski, David Huffaker, Ed H. Chi

CHI 2012 (2012)

A large-scale empirical study of selective sharing behavior in Google+, examining how users leverage Circles to manage audiences for different types of content.

The Life and Death of Online Groups: Predicting Group Growth and Longevity

Sanjay Kairam, Dan J. Wang, Jure Leskovec

WSDM 2012 (2012)

A predictive study of online group dynamics, identifying early structural and behavioral signals that predict whether groups will grow or dissolve.

EchoTree: Engaged Conversation when Capabilities are Limited

Andreas Paepcke, Sanjay Kairam

Technical Report 2012 (2012)

A collaborative word-tree visualization system that facilitates face-to-face and remote communication with speech and movement impaired individuals.

Eddi: Interactive Topic-Based Browsing of Social Status Streams

Michael S. Bernstein, Bongwon Suh, Lichan Hong, Jilin Chen, Sanjay Kairam, Ed H. Chi

UIST 2010 (2010)

An interactive system for topic-based browsing of social status streams, enabling users to filter and organize incoming social content by topic.

Designing a Cross-Channel Information Management Tool for Workers in Enterprise Task Forces

Gregorio Convertino, Sanjay Kairam, Lichan Hong, Bongwon Suh, Ed H. Chi

AVI 2010 (2010)

A user study and design investigation of cross-channel information management tools for knowledge workers operating across multiple communication channels.

FeedWinnower: Layering Structures over Collections of Information Streams

Lichan Hong, Gregorio Convertino, Bongwon Suh, Ed H. Chi, Sanjay Kairam

CHI 2010 (2010)

A system that applies layered structural organization to social information streams, helping users manage and prioritize high-volume feeds.

Do Your Friends Make You Smarter? An Analysis of Social Strategies in Online Information Seeking

Brynn M. Evans, Sanjay Kairam, Peter Pirolli

IP&M 2010 (2010)

An analysis of social strategies in online information seeking, examining how social signals affect the quality and efficiency of search behavior.

Designing for Learning Communities in a Large Enterprise

Gregorio Convertino, Sanjay Kairam, Ed H. Chi, Antonietta Grasso, Peter Pirolli, Tanya Stricker, Eduardo Bascaran

CSCW 2010 Workshop (2010)

Design considerations for supporting learning communities in large enterprise settings, drawing on two case studies from an IT services organization.

A Torrent of Tweets: Managing Information Overload in Online Social Streams

Michael Bernstein, Sanjay Kairam, Bongwon Suh, Lichan Hong, Ed H. Chi

CHI 2010 Workshop (2010)

An exploration of how users manage information overload in high-volume social streams, with formative studies and a prototype topic-based Twitter client.

Exploring the Cognitive Consequences of Social Search

Brynn M. Evans, Sanjay Kairam, Peter Pirolli

CHI 2009 (2009)

An experimental study of how social search affects cognitive load and information-seeking outcomes compared to independent web search.