SIG-SM Events
In the last few years, we have heard the terms fake news, disinformation, misinformation, etc. repeatedly. Yet, we do not clearly know how to be better informed, fight this phenomenon, or to train people in combating it. With a vast majority of population relatively new to technology, and not trained in any formal way to decipher the real from unreal, truth from half-truths and lies, people actually end up believing disinformation as truth, especially when there is enough repetition.
In this talk, I will describe the phenomenon and its implications, the current efforts and their degree of success, and provide directions for information professionals to fight disinformation and fake news. - Understanding the terms such as fake news, misinformation, and disinformation - Understanding the role of social media in mediating the above - Identifying the steps that can be undertaken to prevent the diffusion of fake news
Presenter
Naresh Agarwal is an Associate Professor and Director of the Information Science & Technology Concentration at the School of Library & Information Science at Simmons University, Boston. He earned his Ph.D. from the National University of Singapore (NUS). Naresh's research area is information behavior and knowledge management — the way people look for information and the contextual factors that impact their choice of information sources. He seeks to understand and synthesize the apparent contradictions in this phenomenon and tries to reconcile multiple perspectives — the user (context, seeking, sense-making, serendipity, avoiding) versus systems/technology, theoretical and empirical studies, and a variety of contexts — office workers, medical residents, LIS students, faculty, librarians, toddlers, etc. His publications span these areas. His book 'Exploring Context in Information Behavior: Seeker, situation, surroundings, and shared identities' was published by Morgan & Claypool.
Naresh also studies serendipitous information encountering and the causes and effects — both on the receiver and the sender — of information avoidance and non-response behaviors, especially by people who use smartphones and social media. He has been a keynote/invited speaker at workshops and conferences in different countries, including in the U.S., Japan, France, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
He has held various leadership positions at ASIS&T. He was a member of its Board of Directors, Co-Chaired its Annual Meeting in 2017, and was awarded the ASIS&T James M. Cretsos Leadership Award in 2012. Currently, he is the Chair-elect of SIG KM, Poster Co-Chair for the ASIS&T 2020 Annual Meeting and Advisor to the South Asia Chapter. Prior to entering the doctoral program at NUS, Naresh worked for six years in technology roles in the voice-over-IP, bioInformatics, and digital cinema industries.
Among other things, Agarwal has been a debater and public speaker and likes to paint in watercolor and oil. In 2018, he started an initiative http://www.projectonenessworld.com to gather human stories through interviews to inspire other human stories. You can learn more about him at http://web.simmons.edu/~agarwal.
SIG SM organized a panel discussion for the ASIS&T Annual Meeting 2018 in Vancouver, Canada on the Challenges for social media: Misinformation, free speech, civic engagement, and data regulations.
The panel discussion took place on Monday, November, 12th from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM (GMT-7). Visit the ASIS&T website for more infomation. These were the participating speakers:
![]() Personal data processing and targeted advertising—Does the General Data Protection Regulation go far enough? |
Nic DePaula is a Ph.D candidate in the department of Information Science at the University at Albany, State University of New York. His research interests are in data science, text mining and political communication. Previously, Mr. DePaula has worked with geographic information technologies and information security. His work has appeared in various journals, including Government Information Quarterly, Social Science Computer Review and First Monday. |
![]() The boundary between hate and free speech—What are the risks of the German Network Enforcement Act |
Dr. Kaja J. Fietkiewicz is post-doctoral research associate at the Department of Information Science, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (Germany). She is a lecturer in information law and statistics as well as mentor for student research projects. Her research interests include smart city development (with focus on e-government), information law (with focus on competition law and data privacy), as well as social media, especially social live streaming services. |
![]() Fake news, its rapid dissemination and its relation to pseudo-cognitive-authorities |
Thomas J. Froehlich, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus, School of Information, Kent State University (27 years). The majority of his publications are concerned with ethical considerations in the information professions, evolving in part from his philosophy background (Ph.D., Duquesne University). Dr. Froehlich currently teaches a course on the Age of Disinformation and has taught in the areas of information science, ethics, online searching, knowledge management and user interface design. He has provided workshops, trainings, seminars or presentations in 26 countries. |
![]() Civic engagement and social media use by nonprofit organizations—Does market capture pose a threat to grassroots democratic activity? |
Dr. A. J. Million is a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan School of Information. His research pertains to the creation and administration of public and nonprofit information resources. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri, where his dissertation examined bureaucratic organization and innovation in U.S. state department of transportation websites. |
You can download the slides presented during the panel HERE.
SIG SM organized a panel discussion for the ASIS&T Annual Meeting 2018 in Vancouver, Canada on Politicians & the Public: The Analysis of Political Communication in Social Media.
The panel discussion will take place on Tuesday, November, 13th from 8:30 AM to 10:00 AM (GMT-7). Visit the ASIS&T website for more infomation. These are the participating speakers:
![]() Juan Pablo Alperin and David Moscrop ![]() Simon Fraser University illustrate his recent research into the best social media channels for promoting scholarly research - Facebook and Twitter.
Why do pundits share scholarly research on social media—and why should we care? |
Dr. Juan Pablo Alperin is a Director of the Scholarly Communications Lab and an Assistant Professor in Publishing at Simon Fraser University. He uses a combination of computational techniques and innovative methods to investigate how knowledge is produced, disseminated, and used.Dr. David Moscrop is a postdoctoral fellow with the Scholarly Communications Lab at Simon Fraser University, specializing in democracy and decision making. He’s also a writer and political commentator. |
![]() Electronic petitioning and social media: Online Collective Action or “Slacktivism”? |
Catherine Dumas is completing her PhD in Information Science at the University at Albany, State University of New York. She is an Assistant Professor at the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University in Boston, MA. Her research is motivated by data generated by platforms potentially used for online collective action or digital activism. Using data mining techniques and online collective action theories her work is exploring the impact of new information communication technologies (ICTs) on the phenomenon of online collective action. |
![]() Amir Karami, University of South Carolina Social media and opinion mining in elections – How to track public opinion in social media? |
Amir Karami is an Assistant Professor in the iSchool of the College of Information and Communications at the University of South Carolina. His research interests are computational social science and and medical/health informatics. He is currently working on developing text-mining techniques and utilizing them for medical, health, and social science. Previously, he was a Data Science Consultant at Washington DC area. |
![]() Vivek Singh, Rutgers University The newer privacy research challenges in surveillance with social “Big Data” |
Vivek Singh is an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University and a Visiting Professor at the MIT Media Lab. His work on privacy has been published in leading scientific venues (Science, Proceedings of the IEEE) and has received significant media coverage (BBC, New York Times, Wall Street Journal). |
![]() Hassan Zamir, Dominican University How political elites use, interact and share information on Twitter during recent presidential elections around the world? |
Dr. Hassan Zamir is a lecturer at the School of Information Studies at the Dominican University (USA). He teaches in the areas of information technology, data science, informatics, and big data. His research interests revolve around social media analytics, big data, and text mining. He plays active leadership roles at the Dominican University and in various professional organizations including the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) and the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE). |
The 14th Annual Social Informatics Research Symposium: Sociotechnical Perspective on Ethics and Governance of Emerging Information Technologies (SIG SI)
ASIS&T 2018 Annual Meeting
Saturday, November 10, 2018
8:30am–4:30pm at the Hyatt Regency Vancouver, Canada
PRELIMINARY WORKSHOP PROGRAM | ||
8:30 – 9:00 | Introduction and Opening Remarks | |
9:00 – 9:45 | Keynote Dr. Mary Gray from Microsoft Research and Indiana University |
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9:45 – 11:00 | Paper Session 1: Ethics and Governance of Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence |
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Elliott Hauser | Algorithms, Incorrigibility, and Social Reality | |
Howard Rosenbaum and Pnina Fichman | The Social Informatics of Algorithmic Accountability | |
Kayla Hilstob and Muhammad Abdul-Mageed | The Bot Next Door: AI & the Future of Work | |
11:00 – 11:15 | Coffee Break | |
11:15 – 12:30 | Paper Session 2: Data, Algorithms, and their Ethics and Social Impact |
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Janice Mattern and Heather Moulaison Sandy | Use, ethics, and governance of data repositories: A power-sensitive sociotechnical perspective | |
Theresa Anderson | Data, Design and Democracy – Shaping People-Centred Data Practices | |
Denice Adkins, Jenny Bossaller, and Heather Moulaison Sandy | Reader-Generated Language and Fiction Publishing | |
12:30 – 13:45 | Working Lunch Session | |
13:15 – 13:45 | New Format: Discussion Table | |
Kenneth R. Fleischmann, James Kuhr, Samuel Baker, Chandra Bhat, Tanya Clement, Junfeng Jiao, Matthew Lease, Peter Stone, Sharon Strover, and William Tierney | Introducing a Social Informatics Grand Challenge Project | |
13:45 – 14:30 | Best Paper Award | |
14:30 – 14:45 | Coffee Break | |
14:45 – 16:00 | Paper Session 3: Misinformation and Post Fact |
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Loni Hagen, Stephen Neely, Keller Thomas, and Ryan Scharf | Investigating Political Polarization: A Case Study of Trump-Russia Investigation Tweets |
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Luanne Freund, Jay Park, Ali Alshehri, and Muhammad Abdul-Mageed |
Towards a framework for characterizing post hoc fact-checking |
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Rachel Simons | Supporting Diversity in Collaborative, Technology-Enabled Design Work |
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16:00 – 16:30 | Closing Keynote |