Forum Schedule
| Local Time |
Section | Presenter | Title | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11:30am - 12:10pm | Keynote speaker talk | Professor Kate Starbird | Online Rumoring, Misinformation, and Disinformation: A Retrospective on a Decade of Research | 40 (30 + 10) |
| 12:10 - 12:40pm | Lunch | - | 30 | |
| 12:40 - 1:00pm | Paper 1 | Meredith Dedema | Socio-technical Issues in the Platform-mediated Gig Economy: A Systematic Literature Review | 20 (15 + 5) |
| 1:00 - 1:20pm | Paper 2 | Jieli Liu | Social Network Analysis of Misinformation Spreading and Science Communication During COVID-19 | 20 (15 + 5) |
| 1:20 - 1:40pm | Paper 3 | Shohana Akter | Humorous and Serious Political Trolling on Fake TikTok Accounts | 20 (15 + 5) |
| 1:40 - 2.00pm | Paper 4 | Gordon Amidu | Collapsing contexts and TikTok’s sociotechnical affordances in reciprocal trolling | 20 (15 + 5) |
| 2:00 - 2:10pm | Break | - | 10 | |
| 2:10 - 2:30pm | Paper 5 | Gyuri Kang | How Uncanny is the Realist Novel?: Text Mining English Novels of the Long Eighteenth Century | 20 (15 + 5) |
| 2:30 - 2:50pm | Paper 6 | Alexandra Wingate | A Novels and the NSTC: A Quantitative Study of Legal Deposit | 20 (15 + 5) |
| 2:50 - 3:10pm | Paper 7 | Megan Vladoiu | Proactive Chat Reference in an Academic Library | 20 (15 + 5) |
| 3:10 - 3:20pm | Break | - | 10 | |
| 3:20 - 3:30pm | Closing and Awards | Professor Pnina Fichman | 10 |
Bios and abstracts
Meredith Dedema
Bio
Meredith Dedema is a PhD student from Department of Information and Library Science, Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington. She received her Bachelor in Information Management and Information System from Peking University, China. She is a student fellow of the Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics and the Center of Computer Mediated Communication. Her research interests include Social Informatics, Gig Economy, Algorithmic Management, and Artificial Intelligence. She is currently working on multiple research projects and completing her coursework at IU.
Abstract
The gig economy and gig work have grown quickly in recent years and have drawn much attention from researchers in different fields. Because the platform mediated gig economy is a relatively new phenomenon, studies have produced a range of interesting findings; of interest here are the socio-technical issues that this work has surfaced. This systematic literature review (SLR) provides a snapshot of a range of socio-technical issues raised in current literature focused on the platform mediated gig economy. Based on a sample of 515 papers gathered from nine databases in multiple disciplines, 132 were coded that specifically studied the gig economy, gig work, and gig workers. Three main socio-technical themes were identified: 1) the digital workplace, which includes information infrastructure and digital labor that are related to the nature of gig work and the user agency; 2) algorithmic management, which includes algorithmic control, information asymmetry, performance management, power asymmetry, and system manipulation, relying on a diverse set of technological tools including algorithms and big data analytics; 3) sustainable design, as a relevant value set that gig workers expect from the platform, which includes trust, fairness, equality, privacy, and transparency. A social informatics perspective is used to rethink the relationship between gig workers and platforms based on the socio-technical issues noted in prior research and discuss the underexplored aspects of platform mediated gig economy. The results draw attention to understudied yet critically important socio-technical issues in the gig economy that suggest short- and long-term opportunities for future research directions.
Jieli Liu
Bio
Jieli Liu is a Ph.D. student in Information Science in the Department of Information and Library Science in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University Bloomington. She holds a Master of Library and Information Science from Peking University and a Bachelor of Library and Information Science from Sun Yat-sen University. Her research interests include social informatics and social media.
Abstract
The outbreak of COVID-19 has resulted in an increase in health misinformation spreading on social media, emphasizing the need for effective science communication to combat this issue. This study aimed to analyze the relationship between misinformation spreading and science communication network. We identified misinformation spreaders, scientists, and laypeople from COVID vaccine-related tweets, and we carried out a network analysis to examine the ingroup and intergroup interactions. We found that individuals in all three groups tended to interact with people who were dissimilar to them. Additionally, we found that the spreading of misinformation and the science communication network are polarized. Finally, suggestions were provided to achieve higher engagement in science communication.
Shohana Akter
Bio
Shohana Akter is a PhD student in Information Science at Indiana University Bloomington. Her research explores user's online behavior in various social media platforms to analyze users trolling and toxic behavior. She did her undergraduate and masters in Information Science and Library Management from Bangladesh. Currently she is exploring on the aspect of users behavior towards Virtual Influencers in Social media.
Abstract
Considering the increase in political discourse on TikTok, this study examined the type and extent of political trolling by and towards Democratic and Republican fake accounts. Content analysis of 88 video posts from fake TikTok accounts and 8,000 comments reveal that: 1. Republican fake TikTok accounts target the Democrats more than they promote their own agenda, while Democratic fake accounts promote their own agenda more than targeting the Republicans; 2. There are more humoristic trolling comments than malevolent trolling comments on fake political accounts’ posts, regardless of their political leaning; 3. There are more trolling comments targeting the politicians or parties that the fake accounts represent than trolling comments targeting their opponents; and 4. The more trolling contents shared by the fake political accounts towards their opponent was evident, the more trolling comments towards the opponents were found on these posts. This study contributes to a better understanding of political trolling by and towards fake political accounts on TikTok.
Gordon Amidu
Bio
I am a second-year PhD student with a keen research interest in the phenomenon of online trolling. My academic journey includes earning my Bachelor's degree from the University of Ghana and completing my Master's degree at Andhra University in India.
Abstract
While the use of TikTok is wide spread across the globe, and trolling on the platform is prominent, little research to date has addressed the style and extent of trolling on TikTok. We don’t know what unique trolling features are enabled by the platform’s socio-technical affordances. One common trolling pattern on Tik Tok is reciprocal trolling or trolling the troll. This paper examines how trolls take advantage of the socio-technical affordances of and the collapsing contexts on TikTok in reciprocal trolling acts.
Gyuri Kang
Bio
Gyuri Kang is a first-year Information Science PhD student at the Indiana University Bloomington. Her research lies in the digital environmental humanities (DEH), where she works at the intersection of humanistic inquiry into environmental issues and digital computing. She uses statistical tools and computational methods to answer humanistic questions about the major and minor environmental problems of our age by looking at social and cultural relationship with the natural world mediated by texts, media, and history. Her research interests include text mining, machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), data visualization, mapping, digital archives and libraries, digital scholarship, and scholarly communication.
Abstract
What made the eighteenth century an information age was the rise in book publishing. The printing technology played a key role in the emergence of the public sphere and the spread of knowledge. The European eighteenth century, in particular, is widely considered as the long eighteenth century and well known for the rise of the English novel, which lies under the birth of literary realism. Now that we are living in the digital age, creating and sharing almost all kinds of information in a digital format is possible. With the help of digital technology, scholars can read such digital data at scale, which may lead to unprecedented findings out of existing knowledge. This leaves room for a necessity to use digital tools in rereading print-based texts, such as realist fiction of the long eighteenth-century, to find undiscovered realities hidden within the texts. Unlike genre fiction, literary fiction, namely nonfiction or the realist novel, is described as character-driven, realistic, and most significantly, uncategorizable. This study of topic modeling aims not just to identify the uncanny elements in literary fiction, but also to categorize realist novels according to the topic model output. By running a topic model on a corpus of English novels written during the long eighteenth century, I examine the topics demonstrating fictional themes in realist novels. By doing so, I refute a common argument that the realist novel lacks in literary imagination and demonstrate that digital technology can be used in creating new knowledge out of existing knowledge.
Megan Vladoiu
Bio
Megan is a third year PhD student in Information Science. She received her MLS from IU in 2021. Her research is centered around library services, particularly reference services, as well as services to LGBTQ+ patrons. She has worked at the Wells Library Scholars’ Commons Reference Desk since 2019 as a reference assistant and started a role as part-time reference desk coordinator in 2023. She is interested in research that has implications for both practice as well as research. She has published in Reference Services Review and presented at ASIST on research related to virtual reference.
Abstract
In August 2023, Wells Library at Indiana University implemented a proactive chat feature on the library website. With this feature, a chat box automatically pops up after forty-five seconds, asking if the user needs help. If the user clicks “chat now”, they are prompted to type a message, which is then sent to reference staff. From the staff side, there is no difference between a question from the proactive chat feature and the regular chat feature. This study in progress will examine how proactive chat transactions differ from regular chat transactions with two guiding research questions. 1.) Is there a difference in politeness between proactive chat services and traditional chat services? and 2.) How does the length of transactions differ between proactive and regular chat services, both in terms of time and word count? This research has practical implications for librarians as well as research implications for virtual chat services and user behavior.
Alex Wingate
Bio
Alex Wingate is a PhD student in Information Science at Indiana University Bloomington. She holds a Masters of Library Science from Indiana University and an MA in the History of the Book from the University of London. Her research focuses on booksellers in early modern Navarre, Spain and the intersection between book history and information science. She is also the Bibliography Editor for both the Chymistry of Isaac Newton Project and SHARP News.
Abstract
The Nineteenth-Century Short Title Catalog (NSTC) attempts to provide comprehensive coverage of the print record in the English-speaking world from 1801 to 1918 based primarily on the catalog records of Britain’s five legal deposit libraries during the 19th century. Previous studies have used the NSTC to quantitatively study broad trends in Victorian-era British publishing, but they have not sufficiently acknowledged the NSTC’s limitations. This study works within the NSTC’s limitations by using it to quantitatively study the phenomena of legal deposit. Analysis of two, 90-volume random samples of first edition English novels using Fisher’s exact test reveals the impact of changing library acquisition practices and legal deposit legislation, and in particular the Copyright Act of 1842, on the comprehensiveness of Britain’s legal deposit libraries. In turn, this analysis demonstrates the connection between legal deposit conditions and the NSTC’s comprehensiveness and the implications for using it as a source for quantitative book history.