Information School News

The Research Ethics Group of the Academy of Social Sciences and the New Social Media New Social Science (NSMNSS) network are hosting a one day conference that aims to further develop and explore the ethics of social science research using social media. The purpose of the conference is to move the debate forward and provide examples of good practice. PhD student Wasim Ahmed will present a paper at the con fe rence, co-authored with Dr Gianluca Demartini and Prof Peter Bath in the Ethical Practicalities Parallel Session A on Using Twitter as a data source: An overview of ethical challenges. Conference Registration on eventbrite can be found here . Twitter hashtag for the conference is: #SoMeEthics . The full programme can be found here or here [pdf] and the abstract booklet is here [pdf] . The Twitter hashtag for the conference is: #SoMeEthics

The Iconic Image on Social Media: A Rapid Research Response to the Death of Aylan Kurdi* by the Visual Social Media Lab , @VisSocMedLab, based in the iSchool and directed by Dr Farida Vis, has been quoted in Altimeter's Top Digital Trends for 2016 .  Altimeter highlights how the image of Alan Kurdi (originally misidentified as Aylan), a Syrian child of Kurdish origin, reached 20 million screens around the world and conveyed the impact of the refugee crisis in a way that words could never do. The Altimeter report also predicts this emerging 'discipline of interpreting and responding to the visual web' as a key trend for 2016. The Iconic Image on Social Media report has received international media coverage since it's publication in December 2015, including on BBC Radio 5,  Buzzfeed ,  The Daily Mail ,  The Guardian ,  The Independent ,  Quartz ,  The Next Web ,  Corriere della Sera ,   Yorkshire Post.  More informatio...

Dr Farida Vis , (Director, Visual Social Media Lab and Faculty Research Fellow based in the Information School) has been interviewed by BBC Radio 5 Live to discuss The Iconic Image on Social Media: A Rapid Research Response to the Death of Aylan Kurdi* report, which was published in December 2015.  The report examines the social media activity following the publication of the iconic photograph of three-year old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi (initially misidentified as ‘Aylan’) whose body was found on Bodrum beach in Turkey, 2 September 2015. The image of Alan’s lifeless body on the beach has become one of the most memorable images of this year, powerfully symbolising the horrors of the refugee crisis . The report tracks how the image spread on social media, how it triggered a social media storm, as it went viral with 53,000 tweets per hour, appearing on 20m screens around the world in just 12 hours. It also measures the impact the image had on the wider public debate ab...