Eshwar Chandrasekharan

Assistant Prof @siebelschool @UofIllinois. Alt-

[Interactive Computing @ UIUC @ICatUIUC]

The Interactive Computing group @ UIUC will have a strong presence at #CHI26, with several papers receiving paper awards. 🏆

We’re starting by highlighting our award-winning papers and where you can catch them during the conference
🧵

[Eshwar Chandrasekharan @eshwar_chan]

The words you pick online aren't just style choices. They shape which ideas get seen and rewarded. And most community guidelines don't even address this.

Excited to see @_agam_goyal_ present this work at #CHI2026!

[Agam Goyal @_agam_goyal_]

🚨 New paper alert at #CHI2026!

In order to learn from aggregated community preferences, we often treat upvotes, golds, and awards as signals of what communities value. But which linguistic features actually drive those signals, and which are just surface correlations?

I’ll be presenting my work "The Language of Approval: Identifying the Drivers of Positive Feedback Online" at CHI 2026 in Barcelona, Spain 🇪🇸
🔗 https://t.co/H0G04biXS2

In this paper, we study 100 Reddit communities and use causal inference to identify which linguistic features actually drive positive feedback like upvotes, gold, and awards.

Huge thanks to @lambert_char and my advisor @eshwar_chan for their help!

More details in 🧵 [1/7]

[Interactive Computing @ UIUC @ICatUIUC]

Current benchmarks for argument summarization overlook the nuance and messiness of online arguments. @gurjar_omkar’s #EMNLP2025 paper ft. @_agam_goyal_ @eshwar_chan @siebelschool introduces a new benchmark built from naturally-occurring Reddit debates.

📝https://t.co/fdfXUkjNLg

[Interactive Computing @ UIUC @ICatUIUC]

When 1 LLM can’t handle all the chaos of online moderation, assemble a team!
@_agam_goyal_'s #EMNLP2025 paper ft. @kous2v, @eshwar_chan @siebelschool introduces MoMoE, a Mixture of Moderation Experts where models work toward fairer, scalable moderation.
📝https://t.co/FQiNIupag5

[Interactive Computing @ UIUC @ICatUIUC]

AI companions can help you open up… and quietly make you feel more alone...
Check out this thoughtful piece by @siebelschool's @kous2v on the paradox of ''synthetic friends'' and why design should point people back to people!
https://t.co/6pOMbjvdFl

[Interactive Computing @ UIUC @ICatUIUC]

Journalism shares information, but not always without cost. New paper presented at @ACM_CSCW by Yian Wang, Mukhilshankar Umashankar, @eshwar_chan & @harisundaram0 studies antisocial behavior online shapes what journalists say and what they hold back.
📝https://t.co/BSNiTvNx7X

[Interactive Computing @ UIUC @ICatUIUC]

ICYMI: Moderation isn’t just rules; it’s how communities learn to stay fair.
Vinay presented Venire @ACM_CSCW. A tool that learns from Reddit mod decisions to flag borderline cases for group review.
📝https://t.co/WPeqF6bkYr ft. Fred, YS, @harisundaram0, @eshwar_chan, @kkarahal

[Siebel School of Computing and Data Science @siebelschool]

🎉 Congratulations to #ILLINOIS CS professor Eshwar Chandrasekharan on receiving an NSF CAREER award!

His research focuses on developing innovative methods to support community-determined behavior norms in online spaces.🌐💬

▶️https://t.co/dkUA9ND9ZP

[Eshwar Chandrasekharan @eshwar_chan]

In another #CHI2025 paper led by Fred Choi, we found that YouTube’s “creator hearts” also served as an incentive mechanism to drive user engagement among bystanders. This was a collaboration with @lambert_char, Vinay Koshy, and a team of SCUBA undergrads!

[Eshwar Chandrasekharan @eshwar_chan]

Excited to be at #CHI2025 with SCUBA lab folks! @lambert_char and Fred Choi will be presenting papers highlighting the effectiveness of positive reinforcement in shaping social norms and encouraging desirable behavior.

Check out their talks at the 11:10AM session on Tuesday!

[Eshwar Chandrasekharan @eshwar_chan]

In a #CHI2025 paper led by @lambert_char, in collaboration with @kous2v, we conducted a quasi-experimental study and found that Reddit users who received “high scores” and “gold” made more frequent and higher quality posts (i.e., higher scores and fewer removals).

[Eshwar Chandrasekharan @eshwar_chan]

Q: Are fine-tuned SLMs better than LLMs at identifying online content that violate community norms?🤖⚖️

A: Yes!

Find out more in our #NAACL2025 paper co-lead by @_agam_goyal_ and Xianyang Zhan, in collaboration with Yilun Chen and @kous2v

📄 https://t.co/PGbcwIVVFg

[Agam Goyal @_agam_goyal_]

🚨 New #NAACL2025 paper alert: “SLM-Mod: Small Language Models Surpass LLMs at Content Moderation”

We show that fine-tuned small language models outperform LLMs like GPT-4o for content moderation tasks, with higher accuracy and recall!

🔗 arXiv: https://t.co/157MJ3tGsm

🧵[1/7]

[Koustuv Saha @kous2v]

UIUC at #CSCW24 💙🧡 @IllinoisCDS @iSchoolUI
@kkarahal @eshwar_chan @YunHuang_HCI @lambert_char @Zihan_Liu_525

[Koustuv Saha @kous2v]

Cool works! @lambert_char is also presenting posters on her dissertation research and preliminary insights into the impact positive reinforcement (Reddit golds) on social media #CSCW2024 @eshwar_chan

[Eshwar Chandrasekharan @eshwar_chan]

Excited to attend #CSCW2024! Learn more about our work on measuring epistemic trust, presented by Dominic in session 2e, and the role of positive reinforcement in online moderation, presented by @lambert_char in session 3d, on Tuesday 🤙

[ACM CSCW @ACM_CSCW]

Do Reddit moderators use positive feedback to reward good contributions? @lambert_char, Frederick Choi, and @eshwar_chan find out in a new #CSCW2024 paper exploring the role of positive reinforcement in moderation through a survey of moderators: https://t.co/MpjpZI9sOZ

[Jeremy Foote | @[email protected] @jdfoote]

Blog post coming, but thanks so much to @eshwar_chan for a fantastic keynote at our Frontiers in Online Community Research Symposium at Purdue!

[Jeremy Foote | @[email protected] @jdfoote]

The grand finale of the event was a fantastic keynote by @eshwar_chan on some of the really great work his lab is doing.

A blog post about the event is up at https://t.co/GARB4JZNUZ

[Jeremy Foote | @[email protected] @jdfoote]

A few weeks ago we had our lab retreat at Purdue and organized a public-facing symposium. It was great! We had panels and presentations by @diana_zulli @MannMarcus @aaronshaw @makoshark @sohwng @carlcolglazier @kayleachampion about the cutting edge of online community research.

[Siebel School of Computing and Data Science @siebelschool]

The 5/11-16 @ACM @acm_chi 2024 conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, the premier international conference of HCI, features 54 @UofIllinois authored papers.

Great job, #ILLINOIS! 🔸🔹