Information School News

 Postdoctoral researcher Dr Itzelle Medina-Perea has had a piece published in The Conversation. The article is entitled 'Do contact-tracing apps have a future?' and analyses the effectiveness of contact tracing apps used at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as their future. The article can can be read here .

  “We rely so much on Google these days”, says Dr Frank Hopfgartner, Senior Lecturer at the Information School and Investigator on the ‘Do You See What I See’ project. “Google has a search engine market share of over 90% worldwide.” Undertaken by Dr Hopfgartner with several fellow members of the Cyprus Center for Algorithmic Transparency (CyCAT) - which was profiled in the research magazine Inform II in 2019 (page 29) - this project aimed to discover the differences in the search results that Google provides to users in different parts of the world. Google states that their mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. This project asked: is that true? Does everyone everywhere have equal access to the same information? And if not, what impact might that have? Dr Frank Hopfgartner “CyCAT for me was very interesting because algorithmic transparency and bias is a very timely topic and one which is receiving a lot of attention”, says ...

  We’ve had several good news stories in the School recently, showing off the strength of our staff’s research! Lecturer Dr Mengdie Zhuang was published in the Conversation, discussing the varying degrees to which the public obeyed COVID lockdown rules Her piece, ‘Household mixing during COVID-19: our research suggests adherence to lockdowns in England declined over time’ can be read here . Lecturer Dr Susan Oman has an exhibit on Understanding Well-being Data in the Festival of the Mind The exhibit is based on her current research on well-being data, recently published as a book, and includes her recently produced videos. You can view the exhibit here . Drs Sara Vannini, Efpraxia Zamani, Caitlin Bentley and Suvodeep Mazumdar have all successfully attained Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) funding for their research projects Lecturer Dr Sara Vannini and Senior Lecturer Dr Efpraxia Zamani have received funding for their work on digital poverty with the Sheffield Mayoral Combin...

The University of Sheffield PRIEST study team have been awarded funding to develop clinical risk-stratification tools to help prevent hospitals in low and middle income countries from becoming overwhelmed during the Covid-19 pandemic. Led by Carl Marincowitz from ScHARR, the team also includes our own Professor Peter Bath and Dr Laura Sbaffi. The project is being conducted with a team from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and aims to develop a risk assessment tool to help emergency clinicians quickly decide whether a patient with suspected COVID-19 needs emergency care or can be safely treated at home to avoid overburdening hospitals particularly in low- and middle- income countries. The project is funded by the International COVID-19 Data Alliance (ICODA). Find out more at this University of Sheffield news story  and this ICODA announcement .

The results of our survey of how academic libraries are supporting student wellbeing, before and during COVID19 are now published. Dr Andrew Cox The paper "Library support for student mental health and well-being in the UK: before and during the COVID19 pandemic" is available via Journal of Academic Librarianship @ DOI . During the pandemic, the emphasis was on alleviating anxiety around accessing online content. The paper proposes a holistic model of library support for student mental health and well-being, with eight aspects: library services impact, well-being as a library service, detection, hosting, signposting, inherent library value, library as a good partner and library staff well-being. Data from the survey was shared in a blog post in June 

Press: University support package hailed as 'creative and clever' Professor James Wilsdon A university bailout package announced by the government in the wake of the coronavirus crisis has been welcomed by research policy analysts. Announced on 27 June by business secretary Alok Sharma, the package includes loans to make up for the unexpected loss of a cross-subsidy from international students, plus £180 million to support salaries and laboratory costs. James Wilsdon, a professor of research policy at the University of Sheffield and director of the Research on Research Institute, told Research Professional News the package was “very welcome”. Read the rest of the article on Research Professional News here .

Faced with an ‘infodemic’ of fake news about Covid-19, most people are checking their facts – but we mustn’t be complacent Dr Paul Reilly Photo by  Hello I'm Nik 🎞  on  Unsplash As fake news spreads about Covid-19, early evidence suggest that most people are responding sensibly, and double-checking the information they receive. However, given trust in journalism remains low, it remains vital, argues Paul Reilly, that we all act responsibility, and verify what we read and watch. Read Dr Reilly's article in the Democratic Audit here.

Long live local journalism: the 'first responders' in the fight against COVID-19 fake news  Dr Paul Reilly There has been much ‘fake news’ about COVID-19 over the past month. This has included disinformation about the virus being ‘manufactured’ in the US, as well as false claims that drinking methanol and bleach cures its victims. While there is certainly some evidence to suggest that social media are turbocharging the sharing of this false information amongst citizens across the globe, politicians have also contributed to misinformation about the pandemic through their media appearances. Most notably, President Donald Trump has repeatedly misled US citizens about the availability of vaccines and the effectiveness of new treatments in his daily televised news briefings. Closer to home, Cabinet Ministers have also made a number of false or misleading statements to the press. In the past week, Michael Gove erroneously claimed that efforts to ramp up COVID-19 testing ...

7 Top tips for working from home!! #workfromhome #stayhomesavelives  By Sheila Webber Our Senior Lecturer, Sheila Webber, has written a blog about working from home during the current pandemic. It's full of some great tips... and a little giggle!  "I am working from home. I would rather not be. I have never, ever, fantasised about delivering online lessons in althleisurewear from my kitchen table or from under a duvet." To raise a much-needed smile at this time, you can read more on Sheila's Information Literacy blog here. 

Digital Data Flows and the COVID-19 Pandemic - should we be paying more attention?  As a third of the global population experiences some form of lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, people around the world are adapting to new ways of living and working, and looking for radical solutions to live with the virus until some form of immunity develops. Digital technologies and the data they process have been central to this response. The production and circulation of digital data is constrained by a complex web of deeply politicised social, cultural, legal, economic and technical factors. These constraints – or, “data frictions” - can be beneficial or problematic, and whether a particular friction is one or the other is often subject to significant debate. Shifts in the nature of data frictions have the potential to influence how societies function at the most fundamental level – they shape the relationship between state and citizens, the management of worker...

Loneliness and Covid-19: Social Distancing Versus Social Isolation Professor of Health Informatics, Peter Bath, was asked to write a piece for Inside Government, on loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article draws on research Professor Bath has undertaken for the Space for Sharing project  on online sharing for people in extreme circumstances, a portion of which was on loneliness amongst older people. You can read the full blog post here:  https://blog.insidegovernment.co.uk/loneliness-covid-19-pandemic-social-distancing-versus-social-isolation

Tackling the Covid-19 pandemic and the loneliness epidemic together Peter A. Bath, Information School and School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR), University of Sheffield. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the current advice from the government is that we should all be taking social distancing measures and reducing our interaction with other people as much as possible to avoid spreading the coronavirus. Some groups in particular, for example, people aged 70 and over and those with long-term health problems, are being asked to limit their contact with friends and family to protect themselves. Whilst it is good that this can help reduce the spread of the virus, and protect vulnerable people, it also runs the risk of making people feel more isolated and lonely.  We live in an age in which there is what has been called “an epidemic of loneliness”. Older people and those with long-term health problems are not only more vulnerable to the effects of Covid-19, but they are also ...