SEMINAR: How Real and Imagined Audiences Shape the Ways We Remember and Reflect in the Digital Age

Guest: Ege Ötenen, Indiana University Bloomington

Title: How Real and Imagined Audiences Shape the Ways We Remember and Reflect in the Digital Age (CS, DS, EE, ME)

Date/Time: December 24, 2025, 13:40

Location: FASS 2031

Abstract: How we remember our past experiences influences how we feel about them, how we make sense of our lives, and ultimately our well-being. In the digital age, remembering is no longer a solitary cognitive act but a dialogical process shaped by real and imagined audiences embedded in social technologies including social media platforms and AI-based technologies. Remembering involves anticipating an audience and narrating an event, processes that can gradually reshape the memory itself. In this talk, I present a series of experimental and interview-based studies examining how autobiographical memories change as people remember and retell them to different audiences. First, I show how narrating memories to audiences with varying levels of psychological closeness impacts memory details and emotional recollection, and how these effects interact with individuals’ cognitive skills, particularly Theory of Mind.
 

Second, using repeated retelling paradigms and computational analyses, I demonstrate how people reflect on their autobiographical memories and how these memories systematically transform when retold in social media–like contexts, including imagined audiences and feedback given by these audiences. Third, I examine conversational AI agents as a new type of audience, explaining why people increasingly turn to AI for personal reflection and how AI-mediated retelling shapes meaning-making in distinct ways. I conclude by synthesizing these findings to show how audiences embedded in social technologies systematically shape autobiographical remembering and reflection. Together, these studies reveal remembering as a dynamic, socially situated process with direct implications for well-being. I then outline how this work informs a broader research agenda aimed at understanding how current technologies influence memory and reflection processes and how we can design future technologies that support individuals’ well-being while minimizing potential harms.
 

Bio: Ege Otenen is a dual PhD candidate in Cognitive Science and Informatics (Human–Computer Interaction & Design) at Indiana University Bloomington. Her research investigates how the presence of real and imagined audiences (from intimate others to social media followers and conversational AI agents) transforms the way people construct, narrate, and make sense of their autobiographical memories. Combining controlled experiments, in-depth qualitative interviews, and computational language analysis, she reveals how social and technological contexts reshape memories and emotions. Currently, Ege examines the emerging role of generative AI systems as “memory partners,” investigating how interactions with chatbots and generative models influence how people remember their past experiences and how they feel about them. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals as Scientific Reports, PLOS ONE, Current Psychology, and peer-reviewed conferences including CHI, Cognitive Science Society, and Human–Agent Interaction. She is a CHI Student Research Competition award winner and former visiting fellow at Princeton University.