HT Adjunct '25: Adjunct Proceedings of the 36th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media

This paper examines how episodic events, such as the GameStop short squeeze, disrupt and reorganize the structure of online discourse. Focusing on Reddit’s meme stock community, we analyze how content-level thematic coherence changes over time by comparing full-period post similarity networks with daily snapshots. We find that, despite widespread lexical diversity, a dominant semantic cluster emerges when data are aggregated, while daily networks reveal sharp spikes in fragmentation and entropy aligned with key moments in the event. These findings demonstrate how structural patterns in online content can reflect collective narrative dynamics, even in the absence of user interaction data.

Tor is widely used to protect users’ anonymity online by mitigating IP-based tracking and blocking browser-level fingerprinting techniques. However, while the Tor browser effectively prevents passive data collection, it cannot stop users from voluntarily disclosing identifying information in web forms provided by onion services. This user-mediated information leakage represents a significant and underexplored threat vector to anonymity. In this work, we propose a fully client-side approach based on Natural Language Processing (NLP) to extend the Tor Browser with the ability to detect potentially deanonymizing information requests in real time. Our method analyzes webpage content—particularly form labels—to identify and flag attempts to solicit personally identifying data. This approach complements existing Tor browser protections by extending them to the semantic level of human-browser interaction. We validate our system using a dataset of real onion service websites, from which we automatically extract form-based user prompts. Interestingly, our analysis shows that 44% of the examined onion services requiring user information include requests for personal data that may compromise user anonymity. Our method achieves over 90% on all standard classification metrics (precision, accuracy, recall, and F1-score) in detecting whether a website requests information that could potentially deanonymize the user, while introducing a negligible processing overhead that does not impact the user’s browsing experience.

Traditional locative hypertext is highly reliant on fixed geographic locations: this allows stories to be tailored to those locations, but heavily restricts their audience. We present a novel locative hypertext system that dynamically positions and adapts narrative content to be responsive to any environment, an effect realised through integration of a pre-written narrative model with real-time environmental and location data. Initial user evaluations show that our approach achieves the traditional benefits of locative storytelling, including heightened perceptions and emotional connections that helped users see places in a new way. At the same time, we observe increased agency and a sense of freedom, leading to participants describing the experience as lived rather than read, with their agency arising through both narrative decisions and physical movement. Our work contributes a new model for locative hypertexts: a form of responsive digital storytelling that is location-considerate, yet location-independent; one which demonstrates many of the benefits of traditional locative hypertext, but with a new aesthetic of freedom and open exploration that fosters serendipity.

Engelbart’s proposal for “Augmenting Human Intellect” envisioned innovation in personal workstations, organizational management, and social organization in order to tackle society’s most intractable problems. Recent thinking about animal cognition and in the philosophy of the mind leads to intriguing speculation about the experience of augmentation. A large body of literature, seldom cited in this connection, explores the tensions between the Augmented and the Basic remnant.

Recently, a call was made for the hypertext community to “return to its roots” by re-exploring our interdisciplinary nature, renewing the areas of common interest with the diverse set of researchers that comprise this community. In this paper, we lay out a set of research questions inspired by several research threads that were active in prior iterations of the hypertext community, but have recently slipped from our focus. The developments of the intervening years have in many cases added nuance and depth to these open questions, potentially making them of renewed interest to the present community. We present these questions through the lens of a maximalist vision that places structure front and center of our model of the world, relegating data to second-class status. We follow the implications of this vision to recover a set of open questions that once occupied, and may once again occupy, a large portion of the interest of the hypertext community.

Large Language Model (LLM) dialogue is rapidly displacing the blue‑link lists that once defined web navigation. While LLM with its fluent answers delights users, this shift affects readers’ agency concealing the associative links and orienting cues that the hypertext community has spent eight decades refining. This paper asks: What must be reclaimed, and what new affordances are possible, when navigation is mediated by a conversational model? We revisit seminal systems from Bush’s Memex to Intermedia and Storyspace to surface five core principles (associative linking, agency, information scent, non‑linearity, maps) and trace how each is strained or obscured in single‑pane chat. By framing the problem through human-data interaction, we articulate three design obligations—legibility, agency, and negotiability—and demonstrate how emerging techniques such as evidence cards, trail-map overlays, diversity sliders, and on‑device tiny LLMs can move us towards reclaiming user agency in navigating the web. We then outline a research agenda that ranges from authoring grammars for LLM‑mediated hypertexts to ethical navigation standards that curb bias and filter bubbles. Near‑term tweaks are actionable today; longer‑term questions chart a collaborative path for hypertext, HCI, and AI researchers. Combining classic hypertext insights with modern LLM capabilities, we aim to outline a road map for conversational interfaces that preserve critical reading and empower users to see (and steer) the trails behind every answer.

Today’s algorithm-driven interfaces, from recommendation feeds to GenAI tools, often prioritize engagement and efficiency at the expense of user agency. As systems take on more decision-making, users have less control over what they see and how meaning or relationships between content are constructed. This paper introduces "Hypertextual Friction," a conceptual design stance that repositions classical hypertext principles—friction, traceability, and structure—as actionable values for reclaiming agency in algorithmically mediated environments. Through a comparative analysis of real-world interfaces—Wikipedia vs. Instagram Explore, and Are.na vs. GenAI image tools—we examine how different systems structure user experience, navigation, and authorship. We show that hypertext systems emphasize provenance, associative thinking, and user-driven meaning-making, while algorithmic systems tend to obscure process and flatten participation. We contribute: (1) a comparative analysis of how interface structures shape agency in user-driven versus agent-driven systems, and (2) a conceptual stance that offers hypertextual values as design commitments for reclaiming agency in an increasingly algorithmic web.

This paper explores the prospect of creating engaging user experiences and collecting leads through an interactive and gamified platform. We introduce Vocalize, an end-to-end system for increasing user engagement and lead acquisition through gamified voice competitions. Using audio processing techniques and LLMs, we create engaging and interactive experiences that have the potential to reach a wide audience, foster brand recognition, and increase customer loyalty. We describe the system from a technical standpoint and report results from launching Vocalize at 4 different live events. Our user study shows that Vocalize is capable of generating significant user engagement, which shows potential for gamified audio campaigns in marketing and similar verticals.

The VR project Fulfilment, is a multi-year research project developed at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) in collaboration with the Anthropology Department at the University of Chicago. The project was enabled through a unique collaboration between anthropologists, designers, and other social scientists from several research institutions spanning the U.S., Europe and Asia with support from the National Science Foundation. This proposal is for a public exhibition of Fulfilment project in the CAVE2 VR Environment as part of the Demos and Exhibitions track during the for ACM Hypertext 2025 Conference.

Project Fulfilment brings VR technology to the forefront of anthropological research to engage participants in guided first-hand observation of the hidden aspects of logistics and the behind-the-scenes effects of supply chain capitalism on ecology, labor and socio-economic wellbeing. This immersive experience unfolds the increasingly pervasive yet often obscured ways in which the infrastructural and operative dimensions of commercial logistics are reshaping the way we work, live and relate to each other and to our environments.

Participants enter a virtual narrative environment by initially selecting an object of “fulfillment” from a 3D user interface of everyday consumer items—such as a teddy bear, stationery, or a healthcare product. The selection of the item serves as an entry point into a deeper exploration of the hidden costs and consequences of commercial logistics. Using a button-equipped wand in the immersive CAVE2 VR system, participants navigate through ten interconnected scenes—including a cityscape, data center, warehouse zones, modern cemetery, prairieland, and military ruins—each revealing layers of ecological, social, historical, and economic entanglements that shape global supply chains.

Interactive objects embedded within each scene act like hyperlinks: when activated, they visually tear open the environment to expose new narratives and landscapes connected to the selected item, inviting participants to reflect on the often-invisible infrastructures and labor that sustain contemporary consumer worlds. This immersive system transforms data-driven insights from fieldwork and archival research into ethnographic spatial storytelling, giving multisensorial form to complex systems and fostering critical reflection on the ethics and impacts of global commerce.

Through this project, we seek to illuminate the hidden dimensions of global supply chains and their entanglements with labor, consumption, and ecological systems. By leveraging the immersive power of virtual reality, Fulfilment expands the methodological toolkit of anthropological fieldwork and deepens public engagement with complex, often obscured, socio-technical infrastructures. The project also invites reflection on hypertext as a conceptual and navigational framework—encouraging viewers to explore how non-linear storytelling and associative connections can reshape the way we experience, interpret, and share immersive ethnographic knowledge. In doing so, it catalyzes interdisciplinary collaboration across anthropology, design, and science, while fostering multimodal pathways for educating scholars and engaging wider publics.

The UN Sustainable Development Goal “Life on Land” is addressing critical concern in environmental sciences about the growing threats of desertification and land degradation from wildfires and other natural disasters. Virtual Reality can play a significant role in planning and displaying a resolution to these issues. Currently, there is a lack of successful real-time interactive models to aid natural disaster management, often leading to unpredicted outbreaks, causing unprepared individuals and citizens to be impacted. Virtual Reality can aid better preparation methods regarding unpredictable wildfires, allowing for all to be ready for contributing to resolutions. To address these concerns, I designed the virtual reality project “Why Must We Make it All Burn?” with the use of 3D typography and hypertext, challenging viewers to confront the human-driven causes of environmental destruction and prompts a critical examination of our role in global ecological crises. Through sketching, storyboarding, creative coding, 3D modeling, design, programming the interactions, special effects, spatial audio, and final testing, this project was developed using Unity Game Engine and C# programming language. The project was exhibited in the CAVE2 VR environment [1], in the University of Illinois, Chicago. The exhibition was attended by 25 people. The audience was immersed in the land of deforestation, among the endless fields of trunks and trees consumed by flames, was an edifying immersive experience for the public. The project motivated my audience to learn more about deforestation and environmental protection. I successfully designed and developed an immersive project that uses Virtual Reality to contribute to environmental engineering, as well as including 3D models of symbolic typography to immerse the audience more. This work will be featured in a special CAVE2 VR exhibition proposed for the Hypertext 2025 Conference, where participants can navigate an interactive VR environment connecting scenes of fire and deforestation through hypertextual typographies.

NHT is a continuing workshop series associated with the ACM Hypertext conference for over a decade. The workshop acts as forum of discussion for the narrative systems community within the wider audience of the Hypertext conference. The workshop runs both presentations from authors of accepted short research papers, and unstructured unconference sessions to provide a venue for important discussions of issues facing and opportunities for members of the narrative and hypertext community. This year the workshop aims to broaden the community again after two years of more focussed themes on mixed reality by encouraging discussions on the breadth of interdisciplinary hypertext narrative.

HUMAN 2025 is the 8^th workshop of a series for the ACM Hypertext conferences. The HUMAN workshop has a strong focus on the user and brings together user‑centered hypertext with artificial intelligence to build intelligent hypertext systems.

The user-centric view on hypertext not only includes user interfaces and interaction, but also discussions about hypertext application domains as well as human-centered AI. Furthermore, the workshop raises the question of how original hypertext ideas (e.g., Doug Engelbart’s “augmenting human intellect” [7] or Jeff Conklin’s “hypertext as a computer-based medium for thinking and communication” [6]) can improve today’s hypertext systems.

The hypertext ecosystem is inherently dynamic, with digital content continuously evolving and disappearing. Web archiving and digital libraries serve as crucial infrastructures for preserving hypertext structures, enabling scholarly research on the evolution of hyperlinked content, and supporting knowledge continuity across various domains.

This workshop will explore cutting-edge approaches in web archiving and their intersection with hypertext research, emphasizing AI-driven preservation, user engagement with digital archives, decentralized archival systems, and ethical considerations. WADL 2025 will feature interactive sessions, hands-on demonstrations, and cross-disciplinary discussions that directly align with ACM Hypertext 2025 themes, including hypertext history, digital storytelling, automation, decentralized hypertext, and ethical concerns in web preservation.

At ACM Hypertext, representatives from Meta's research partnerships team led a tutorial for researchers about Meta Content Library and demonstrated the latest features available in its user interface (UI) and API. The Content Library provides researchers comprehensive access to public content from Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Users can surface billions of data points from public posts, videos, photos, reels, story highlights, and more. The in-depth demonstration led by our partnerships and data science team demonstrated how the API and the UI can surface this content and illuminate topics relevant to ACM Hypertext attendees studying the intersection of digital media and society. Meta also provided an overview for how individuals and research teams can apply for access to these tools, as well as opportunities for attendees to share feedback about Meta's research tools and services.