Ripples in AIMC @ CSCW 2026
Broader Impacts of GenAI in Communication: Building Agendas for Research, Design, and Policymaking
@CSCW 2026 | Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
Overview
Welcome to the CSCW 2026 workshop Broader Impacts of GenAI in Communication: Building Agendas for Research, Design, and Policymaking! GenAI is increasingly integrated into a broad range of communicative activities — from drafting messages and creating content to summarizing and filtering the information people receive — and is now commonly used across settings ranging from interpersonal to social. Accordingly, the impacts of GenAI extend well beyond individual communication sessions, warranting a holistic examination.
What emergent impacts in AI-mediated communication (AIMC) constitute risks? And how can we act upon them? This workshop seeks to discuss what impacts constitute risks and build agendas of research, design, and policy for these emerging risks of GenAI use in communication. We focus on risks that are hard to attribute to a single bad actor or deployment decision, and that may only become apparent as they accumulate gradually across many subtle instances.
We welcome participants who are interested in or actively working on these open challenges, including those conducting empirical investigations, those designing GenAI-integrated systems, and those engaged in policy and governance work.
Workshop Themes and Topics
Broader Impacts of GenAI in Communication
Examples of broader impacts span several interconnected dimensions, including but not limited to:
Impacts on individual capacities
Cognitive: creativity, critical thinking, decision-making
Communication: writing, argumentation, reading comprehension, information literacy
Epistemic: epistemic autonomy, independent judgment, information seeking
Impacts on relationships and communities
Authenticity, effort, and trust in communication
Community norms and expectations around AI use
Perceived sincerity and emotional connection
Impacts on public discourse and beliefs
Attitude formation and belief shifts
Polarization and echo chambers
Susceptibility to persuasion and manipulation
Impacts on ecosystems
Ownership and attribution of AI-generated content
AI slop and information quality degradation
Content authenticity and distinguishability
Valuation of creative work
Agendas for Research, Design, and Policymaking
Empirical Foundations
What do we know about the impacts of GenAI in communication?
What are the potential risks arising from these impacts?
What research methods and frameworks are effective for studying these impacts and emerging risks?
Design Opportunities
How can GenAI tools be designed to prevent potential risks?
How can digital platforms be designed to respond to increasing GenAI adoption?
What designs and mechanisms can help preserve meaningful human engagement while mitigating the risks?
Policy and Regulation
What new policies and regulations are needed? What can or should be considered under governance frameworks?
How should debatable topics, such as ownership and attribution of AI-generated content, be regulated?
How to create accountability structures for consequences that are hard to attribute to any single stakeholder?
Call for Participation
You are welcome to apply through one of two following submission formats. All submissions will be reviewed by the organizing team, with selection guided by our commitment to assembling a group that reflects a diversity of disciplines, experiences, and perspectives.
Short Paper: A short paper (up to 4 pages, 2-column ACM format, excluding references) presenting work and positions related to the impacts of GenAI use in communication. Short papers may have multiple authors. Work-in-progress and encore submissions are welcome. If accepted, at least one author need to present the work. Accepted short papers will be published on our workshop website.
Statement of Interest: A single-author brief statement (1–2 pages) expressing your interest in the impacts of GenAI use in communication with concrete examples, outlining your reasons for joining the workshop, questions you want to explore, and a short bio highlighting your background or current work.
Timeline
July 31th, 2026 (AoE) Deadline for submissions
Aug 14th, 2026 (AoE) Decision notification
Oct 10th, 2026 (AoE) Workshop @CSCW 2026
Organizers
University of Chicago
Jiayin Zhi is a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Chicago. Her research explores how to better evaluate human-AI systems, and investigates how GenAI influences the way people think and communicate by creating and evaluating GenAI systems. She focuses on reading and writing as the fundamental activities through which people engage with information.
University of Chicago
Lan Gao is a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Chicago. Her research interests lie in the intersection of HCI, Trust and Safety, and AI Governance. Her recent work focuses on the governance of GenAI in the online information ecosystem, such as AI-generated content in online communities and on digital platforms.
University of Southern California
Angel Hsing-Chi Hwang (she/her) is a human–AI interaction (HAII) researcher and Assistant Professor of Communication and Computer Science at USC. Her work examines how conversational AI shapes social interactions in one-on-one and group contexts, and the downstream effects on social, emotional, and psychological well-being. Building on these insights, she also examines new approaches to responsible AI design and methods for studying its AI’s long-term societal impacts.
IBM Research
Jessica He is a UX Designer on the Trustworthy AI team at IBM Research. Her work investigates questions of authorship, accountability, and disclosure of AI usage in co-created work, as well as ways to identify and communicate risks of emerging AI technologies to diverse stakeholders.
University of Washington
Alexis Hiniker is an Associate Professor of at UW Information School where she studies manipulative design and dark patterns. Her research has been cited in multiple U.S. state and federal congressional sessions, and she has provided subject-matter expertise to the White House, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the European Commission. She is a Jacobs Foundation Fellow, a Google Research Scholar, a former advisor to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, and a recipient of the SIGCHI Societal Impact Award.
Georgia Tech
Munmun De Choudhury is J. Z. Liang Professor at Georgia Tech, whose work sits at the intersection of computational social science, HCI, and digital mental health. She develops approaches to understand and support mental well-being at scale, and contributes to global AI and public policy through advisory roles, including with the World Health Organization and other global initiatives. She is a recipient of the SIGCHI Societal Impact Award, a member of the SIGCHI Academy, and an ACM Distinguished Member.
University of Chicago
Mina Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science and Data Science Institute at the University of Chicago. Her research examines the evolving relationship between people and AI, with a particular focus on writing, reading, and thinking with AI.
University of Chicago
Marshini Chetty is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago where she directs the Amyoli Internet Research Laboratory (AIR lab). She specializes in human-computer interaction and usable privacy and security and has been actively studying how AI is being adopted in schools, scientific organizations, and AI governance more broadly.
© 2026 CSCW 2026 Workshop on Broader Impacts of GenAI in Communication