Prof. Ponnurangam Kumaraguru and his student Tejasvi Chebrolu; and Ashwin Rajadesingan, University of Texas at Austin, received the  Best Paper Award — Honorable Mention for their research work on How Personal Narratives Empower Politically Disinclined Individuals to Engage in Political Discussions at the 17th ACM Web Science Conference (WebSci-2025) held at New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA from 20 – 23 May. Here is the summary of the paper as explained by the authors:

Engaging in political discussions is crucial in democratic societies, yet many individuals remain politically disinclined due to various factors such as perceived knowledge gaps, conflict avoidance, or a sense of disconnection from the political system. In this paper, we explore the potential of personal narratives—short, first-person accounts emphasizing personal experiences—as a means to empower these individuals to participate in online political discussions. Using a text classifier that identifies personal narratives, we conducted a large-scale computational analysis to evaluate the relationship between the use of personal narratives and participation in political discussions on Reddit. We find that politically disinclined individuals (PDIs) are more likely to use personal narratives than more politically active users. Personal narratives are more likely to attract and retain politically disinclined individuals in political discussions than other comments. Importantly, personal narratives posted by politically disinclined individuals are received more positively than their other comments in political communities. These results emphasize the value of personal narratives in promoting inclusive political discourse.

June 2025