Information School News

The Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), formed in 1937, is a not for profit organisation for information professionals. The organisation is a sponsor of an annual conference and also a number of serial publications including the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST). The organisation also supports a number of prestigious sub-divisions known as Special Interest Groups. Until now there was no Special Interest Group on social media (SIG SM) for ASIS&T. However, due to the significant growth of the field as can be evidenced from conferences, journals, and scholarly articles based specifically related to social media it was now time to formulate such a group. There was strong support for forming the group from ASIS&T members and the decision for the inception of the group was announced at the 80th annual meeting in Washington, DC. We are a group of diverse and interdisciplinary scholars from across the world. Our miss...

Small-scale and localised innovation is increasingly seen as an important part of the activites of marginal producers in the Global South. Yet, given that such innovation is often difficult to identify and measure, it has rarely been explored as part of evidence-based policy. A recently post on the Sheffield Institute of International Development (SIID) blog by Information School Lecturer Dr Chris Foster looks to explore how we might start to quantify and build evidence-based research on such activities. It is based on research undertaken with Kenyan horticulture farmers. This blog accompanies a recently released paper on this topic written by Chris alongside ODI economist Aarti Krishnan.

PhD student Wasim Ahmed, Professor Peter Bath, and Dr Gianluca Demartini have recently had a peer-reviewed book chapter published which looked at the ethical, legal, and methodological challenges of researching Twitter. The chapter is now open access, and the abstract and the link to download the chapter are provided below. Abstract This chapter provides an overview of the specific legal, ethical, and privacy issues that can arise when conducting research using Twitter data. Existing literature is reviewed to inform those who may be undertaking social media research. We also present a number of industry and academic case studies in order to highlight the challenges that may arise in research projects using social media data. Finally, the chapter provides an overview of the process that was followed to gain ethics approval for a Ph.D. project using Twitter as a primary source of data. By outlining a number of Twitter-specific research case studies, the chapter will be a valuable res...

Dr. Nipon Parinyavuttichai, who graduated with a PhD from the Information School in 2011, recently earned a certificated of recognition from the Thai Health Promotion Foundation (ThaiHealth) for his continuing support for social improvement in Thailand. ThaiHealth is a state agency with the mission to inspire, motivate, coordinate, and empower individuals and organizations in all sectors for the enhancement of health promotion, working towards a healthy society and environment. Dr. Parinyavuttichai‘s latest contribution involves the initiation of a volunteer engagement program from various professional fields to help the Cha-choeng-sao municipality create a 10-year strategic plan to provide older people with better provision in various ares such as healthcare services, education, information technology, architecture and social welfare. Dr. Parinyavuttichai applies information theories learned from the Information School, coupled with other information management strategies...