News

On Friday, April 7, 2017, the Social Media and Society Cluster presented a panel of social media-oriented research to the faculty, students, and prospective Ph.D. students of the School of Communication and Information (SC&I). The panel consisted of:

Organizer and Moderator: Dr. Mary Chayko, Chair, Social Media and Society Cluster (mary.chayko@rutgers.edu)

“Sensing, Understanding, and Shaping Human Behavior” – Dr. Vivek Singh (vivek.k.singh@rutgers.edu)

“Frites, Flags, and Faux Pas: Imagined Nationality in Social Media Expressions of Sympathy after the Brussels Attacks” – Dr. Susan Keith (susank@rutgers.edu)

“Rethinking Boundaries of Urban Ethnography and Communication” – Dr. Jeffrey Lane (jeffrey.lane@rutgers.edu)

“Social Information Seeking” – Dr. Chirag Shah (chirags@rutgers.edu)

Prof. John Pavlik has published: Pavlik, John V. (2016). “Data, Algorithms and Code: Implications for Journalism Practice in the Digital Age” in Bob Franklin and Scott A. Eldridge II (eds) The Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies (pp. 265-273), Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Prof. Pavlik also gave an invited speech to the Garden State Journalists Association, “Journalism Disrupted: Threats and Opportunities on the Horizon” on Nov. 9, in Hackensack, N.J.

Prof. Marie Radford has published the following book: Lynn Silipigini Connaway and Marie L. Radford. “Research Methods in Library and Information Science,” 6th Ed., Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.

…and book chapter:

Naaeke, A. Kurylo, A. Grabowski, M. Linton, D., and Radford, M. L. (2016). “Insider and Outsider Perspective.” In Kurylo, A. (Ed.) “Negotiating Group Identity in the Research Process: Are You In or Are You Out?” pp. 205-214. Lanham, Md: Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group.

Prof. Radford also presented the following competitive papers:

• Radford, G. P., Radford, M. L., and Lingel, J. “The Heterotopia in the Panopticon: Conceptions of the Library Experience From the Work of Michel Foucault.” Presented at the Annual Conference of the National Communication Association, Nov. 10-13, Philadelphia, Pa. Both Gary Radford ‘91 and Jessica Lingel ’13 are Ph.D. alumni.
• Radford M. L., Singh, V., Huang, S., and Furrer, S.  “A Joke Taken Too Far: Cyberbullying & Newer Apps in Schools.” Presented at the New Jersey Association of School Librarians conference, Nov. 17-19, Long Branch, N.J.

…and the following invited talk: Radford, M. L., Mentor N.J. In-Person Networking Event 2016. “What Library Schools Are or Are Not Teaching.” Monroe Township Public Library, N.J., Nov. 9.

Prof. Mary Chayko co-presented, with Sociology Ph.D. student Victoria Gonzolez, the paper “When the Story Doesn’t Fit: The Negotiation and Impact of Narrative in Digital Social Movements” at the annual conference of MAPACA (Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association), Nov. 5 in Atlantic City, N.J.

She also co-presented, with SC&I Ph.D. students Maria Dwyer, Ralph Gigliotti, Katie Kang, Sean Leavey and Surabhi Sahay and recent Ph.D. program graduate Maggie Boyraz and Teaching Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies Mary Chayko, a session on online and hybrid learning at the annual conference of the National Communication Association (NCA), Nov. 12, 2016 in Philadelphia, Pa. The session was titled “Hybrid and Online Approaches to Teaching Communication Courses in a Civic-Minded Academy: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.”

Prof. Chayko was also quoted in the following articles:

• Daily Targum, Oct. 30: “Most Millenials Get Their News Online, Study Says”
• Asbury Park Press, Nov. 7: “The Election is Stressing People Out – Here’s Why.”
• WHYY/Philadelphia Newsworks, Nov. 18: “In the Age of the Social Media Attack, Temple Freshman Lands on Haters’ Radar.”

Prof. Vikki Katz made the following presentations:

• At the Digital Media & Learning Conference (Oct. 5-7, at University of California-Irvine): “Children as Family Technology Brokers, and Members of Digital Learning Teams.”
• At the Society for Research in Child Development’s conference on Technology and Media in Children’s Development (Oct. 27-30, at University of California-Irvine): “Family Learning with Technology in Lower-Income Families” (co-authors: Meghan Moran, Johns Hopkins University and Carmen Gonzalez, University of Washington).
• On a panel celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Journal of Children & Media: “Researching Children, Intersectionality and Diversity in the Digital Age” (co-authors: Meryl Alper, Northeastern University and Lynn Schofield Clark, University of Denver).
• At NCA (Nov. 9-12, Philadelphia): Invited speaker at preconference, “Media and Class in the 21st Century” and “Community Variations in Low-Income Latino Families’ Technology Adoption and Integration” (with Carmen Gonzalez, University of Washington).
• As an invited speaker at Princeton University’s Adult School (Nov. 7, Princeton, N.J.) as part of a series titled, “The Many Worlds of Communication”: “Family Communication in the Digital Age: How Technology Influences Family Learning and Social Opportunity.”

Prof. Regina Marchi:

• Gave a talk about her book “Day of the Dead in the USA: The Migration and Transformation of a Cultural Phenomenon” at the Boston Public Library on Nov. 3.
• On Friday, Nov. 11, Marchi did a presentation on Critical Communication Studies and Peace Journalism as part of the panel: Pedagogy of Peace and Conflict held at the National Communication Association Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.
• Was quoted in Refinery 29 in a story titled “Beyond The Sugar Skull — What We Can Really Learn From The Day Of The Dead.”

Assistant Professor Matthew Weber:

• Gave an invited talk in November with Ph.D. Student Allie Kosterich at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. The presentation was titled, “Work Histories and Changing Skills in 21st Century Newsrooms.”

Weber also presented the following papers at the Annual Meeting of the National Communication Association (NCA) in Philadelphia, Pa.:

• Kristensen, T.M. and Weber, M. (2016). “From Traits to Ties: The Communicative Influence on Creative Processes.” The slides can be found here.
• Kosterich, A, and Weber, M. (2016). “Rapid Organizational Legitimacy: The Case of Mobile News Apps.” The paper can be found here. The slides can be found here.
• Weber, M. S., and Treem, J. (2016, November). “Organizational Metrics of Technology Use and the Paradox of Control.”
• Yanovitzky, I. and Weber, M. S. (2016, November). “News Media as Knowledge Brokers: Rethinking the Influence of the News Media in Public Policymaking.”

Prof. Weber and Prof. Katherine Ognyanova colloborated on the following presentation at NCA:

Weber, M. S., Ogyanova, K., and Kosterich, A. (2016, November). “Imitation in the Quest to Adapt: Lessons from News Media on the Early Web.”

Prof. Ognyanova was also cited in Wired for this story on political Twitter bots used this election season.

CBS Philly, in a story titled “Anti-Trump Protests Break Out While Social Justice Academics in Philly” covered the protests that took place at the National Communication Association (NCA) conference, a conference many SC&I faculty and students attended. Associate Professor Jack Bratich noted Associate Professor Todd Wolfson‘s work to connect many of the local organizations to the NCA organizers, as well as his efforts with Media Mobilizing Project in a number of sessions (not included in the article).

At the Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology’s (ASIS&T):

Prof. Kaitlin Costello presented “Qualitative Methods for Studying Health Information Behaviors,: a panel discussion with Sanghee Oh, Florida State University, Annie T. Chen, University of Washington, and Barbara M. Wildemuth, University of North Carolina

New SIG Chair Prof. Rebecca Reynolds chaired an information session on the scope and goals for the new SIG Information and Learning Sciences, and presented the poster “What Social Media Data Should I Use in My Research?: A Comparative Analysis of Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, and the New York Times Comments” with Celina Wing Yi Lee, Samuel Kai Wah Chu, Joanna Oi Yue Cheng, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong S.A.R. (China).

Prof. Chirag Shah presented the following with a variety of co-authors:

• “Exploring the Relationships Between Search Intentions and Query Reformulations”
• “Using Affective Signals as Implicit Indicators of Information Relevance and Information Processing Strategies”
• “Deconstructing the Failure: Analyzing the Unanswered Questions within Educational Q&A”
• “Exploring Support for the Unconquerable Barriers in Information Seeking”
• “Information Worth Spreading: An Exploration of Information Sharing from Social Q&A to Other Social Media Platforms”
• “Which Team Benefits from Collaboration?: Investigating Collaborative Information Seeking Using Personal and Social Contextual Signals”
• “Plagiarism-free Inquiry Project-based Learning with UPCC Pedagogy” (chaired session)

Prof. Shah also:

• Gave a talk on “Information Fostering: Proactively Supporting Information Seeking” at University of Tampere, Finland on Oct. 21.
• Presented the following paper: Mitsui, M., & Shah, C. (2016). “Multi-Word Generative Query Recommendation Using Topic Modeling.” In Proceedings of RecSys 2016 Conference. Boston, Mass. The first author is Matt Mitsui, a Ph.D. student in Computer Science.

Prof.  Matthew Weber’s article, “Organizational Disruptions and Triggers for Divergent Sensemaking,” published in the International Journal of Business Communication, was awarded Article of the Year by the journal. The article is co-authored by Gail Thomas (Naval Postgraduate Institute) and Kim Stephens (University of Southern California).  He also spoke as an invited panelist on the topic of “Why Save Online News,” at the 2nd Dodging the Memory Hole conference, held at the University of California Los Angeles on Oct. 13 and 14, and supported by the Reynolds Journalism Institute and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Professor and Director of the Ph.D. Program Marie Radford published a book titled “Library Conversations,” subtitled “Reclaiming Interpersonal Communication Theory for Understanding Professional Encounters.” Radford’s co-author is her husband GaryRadford ‘91 who is a Ph.D. alumnus. The book was published by ALA Neal-Schuman.

Prof. Rebecca Reynolds has published a book: Chu, S., Reynolds, R., Notari, M., Taveres, N., & Lee, C. (2016). “Developing 21st Century Skills through Inquiry Based Learning: From Theory to Practice.” Springer Science. She also presented the following paper at ASIS&T: Lee, C., Chu, S., Cheng, J. & Reynolds, R. (2016). “Plagiarism-Free Inquiry Project-Based Learning with UPCC Pedagogy.” To be included in the Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), Copenhagen 2016. And with chair of the Department of Library and Information Science, Prof. Ross Todd, she presented the following:

• Keynote address:  “School Libraries: Unlocking the Potential Through Inquiry, Innovation and Data.” International Association of School Librarianship 2016 Regional Conference: Latin American and the Caribbean. The University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica, July 12-15.
• With Doctoral Student Xiaofeng Li, (2016). “”We Don’t Get Any Help, What We Do Is Just a Simple Test, Like Trial and Error’: Information Practices of Young People at a Public Library Makerspace.” Presentation at CoLIS 9, Uppsala, Sweden. June 27-29.
• With Medina, V G. and Todd, R. J.  “Empowering Students for a Digital World:  Global Concerns, Local School Evidence and Strategic Actions” Research Forum.  Proceedings of the 45nd International Conference incorporating the 20th International Forum on Research in School Librarianship. Meiji University, Tokyo Japan, August 22-26.

Prof. Vikki Katz‘s book “Kids in the Middle” was reviewed in the International Journal of Communication. Her research, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, was cited in the Christian Science Monitor in an article titled “Free Basics: The Best Way to Improve Americans’ Internet Access?”

Prof. Mary Chayko co-presented (with Prof. Brittney Cooper, of the department of Women’s and Gender Studies) a workshop on “Public Scholarship and Civic Engagement,” at the Institute for Research on Women, Rutgers University, on Oct. 13.  She also produced and voiced an animated video “trailer” for the Gender and Media minor that she directs at SC&I. View the video here.

Prof. Marya Doerfel gave an invited talk “Mixed Methods and Social Networks: Tools and Techniques for Examining Interorganizational Networks” to the Command, Control, and Interoperability Center for Advanced Data Analysis (CCICADA), in Piscataway, NJ.

Prof. John V. Pavlik presented an invited paper: “The Rise of Virtuality: Experiential Media and the Transformation of Cyberjournalism.” Presented at 7th Congresso International de Cyberjournalismo, Oct. 7, Campo Grande, Brazil.

Ph.D. Candidate Dongho Choi presented two posters at the Annual Meeting of Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) 2016 in Copenhagen, Denmark, October 14-18, with Ph.D. Student Ziad Matni, and Social Media Cluster faculty Prof. Chirag Shah and Prof. Vivek Singh:

• Dongho Choi, Ziad Matni, Chirag Shah, “What Social Media Data Should I Use in My Research?: A Comparative Analysis of Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, and The New York Times Comments.”
• Dongho Choi, Chirag Shah, Vivek Singh, “Which Team Benefits from Collaboration?: Investigating Collaborative Information Seeking Using Personal and Social Contextual Signals.”

With Post-Doctoral Associate Chris Leeder, Prof. Chirag Shah published an article in the Sept. 2016 issue of the journal Information Research titled “Strategies, Obstacles, and Attitudes: Student Collaboration in Information Seeking and Synthesis Projects.”

Prof. Vikki Katz made the following presentation to the National Educational Telecommunications Association, Baltimore, MD. “Meeting Families Where They Are: Digital Equity and Learning in Low-Income U.S. Families.”

Also, Prof. Katz’s her digital equity study was cited in the Washington Post in an article titled “ Teen Lives Depend on the Internet. What Happens When They Can’t Afford It?” And her 2010 article on children brokering media and technology for their immigrant parents has been highlighted as one of the most downloaded articles of the Journal of Children & Media’s first ten years. The journal included it in a virtual issue honoring its anniversary.

Prof. Matthew Weber gave an invited talk on “Archives Unleashed” at the Library of Congress as part of the Collections as Data event held on Tuesday, Sept. 26. Weber’s talk examined new models for encouraging collaboration around and driving engagement with archived Web data. The event was live-streamed and is available at the Library of Congress’s YouTube channel.

Prof. Mary Chayko was interviewed about social media and its role in coaching, recruiting, and developing soccer players at the professional and college ranks on the Sirius XM program “The Coaching Academy” on August 30. She then co-hosted the remainder of the hour-long program, interviewing subsequent guests about their concerns regarding social media use among soccer players.

Prof. Chayko was also interviewed by the New Books Network in September about her recently released book “Superconnected: The Internet, Digital Media, and Techno-Social Life” (Sage). The half-hour podcast can be accessed here.

Prof. Marie Radford was mentioned in the fall 2016 issue of the newsletter titled “The Informed” published by the University of Buffalo Graduate School of Education’s Department of Library and Information Studies for a talk she gave on March 3  at the department’s seminar series. Radford’s talk was titled “I’ve Already Googled It and I Can’t Understand It: User’s Perceptions of Virtual Reference and Social Q and A.”

At the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) meeting Aug. 4-7 in Minneapolis, Prof. Susan Keith was honored as one of eight graduates of the first class of the AEJMC Institute for Diverse Leadership, a leadership program that took place during the 2015-2016 academic year. She also published a book chapter this summer: Keith, S. (2016). “Scandal At the Top in TV News.” In Hilda Mandell and Gina Masullo Chen (Eds.), “Scandal in the Digital Age,” pp. 161-172. New York: Palgrave Macmillan and was quoted by The Record in a story titled “Limits Proposed to N.J. Public Records Law.”

Prof. Keith was also re-elected as a teaching co-chair of the Newspaper and Online News Division at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) meeting Aug. 4-7 in Minneapolis  and was a panelist on three panels:

• Cohen v. Cowles Media at 25: Its Lasting Legacy,” co-sponsored by the Law and Policy Division and the Newspaper and Online News Division
• “What Really is Social Photojournalism?” co-sponsored by the Visual Communication Division and Newspaper and Online News Division
• The annual Breakfast of Editing Champions, co-sponsored by the Newspaper and Online News Division and the Scholastic Journalism Division, along with the American Copy Editors Society, the Dow Jones News Fund and Poynter NewsU

Prof. Marya Doerfel, along with doctoral candidate Jack Harris and former post-doctoral associate Yannick Atouba, published “(Un)Obtrusive Control in Emergent Networks: Examining Funding Agencies’ Control Over Nonprofit Networks” inNonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. Prof. Doerfel conducted a workshop “Organization and Community Resilience” for Denmark’s Aarhus University Executive MBA program.

Prof. John Pavlik published: “Mobile, Wearable and Social Media: Technological Implications for Media Innovation,” Invited paper in Special Conference Report: 20 Years of the Internet in China: Reform and Innovation, published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, July 2016 pp. 159-170. Prof. Pavlik also:

• Gave a keynote address, “Big Data and Experiential Media: Considering the Cultural Implications,” at 7th Global Communication Forum in Guiyang of Guizhou Province on July 16-17th, which theme is Cultural Identity and Regional Development in the Era of Global Networking and Big Data.
• Presented the paper “Experiential Media and Disabilities in Education: Enabling Learning Through Immersive, Interactive, Customizable & Multi-Sensorial Digital Platforms” in Themed Session 2: Education and Learning in a World of Difference. Sixteenth International Conference On Diversity In Organizations, Communities & Nations, Granada, Spain, July 29, 2016.

Prof. Matthew Weber and two colleagues, Jimmy Lin (Computer Science, University of Waterloo) and Ian Milligan (History, University of Waterloo) hosted a datathon at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. on June 14 and 15, 2016, titled “Archives Unleashed 2.0.”

Prof. Chirag Shah presented the following paper at the JCDL conference the week of June 22, and it won the Best Student Paper Award. Le, L. T., Shah, C., & Choi, E. (2016). “Evaluating the Quality of Educational Answers in Community Question-Answering.” In Proceedings of the 16th ACM/IEEE-CS on Joint Conference on Digital Libraries – JCDL ’16 (pp. 129–138). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. doi:10.1145/2910896.2910900. Prof. Shah also:

• Gave a talk on “Social Information Seeking: Leveraging the Wisdom of the Crowd” at IRIT in Toulouse, France on Thursday, June 16.
• Also presented the following demo at JCDL: Mitsui, M., & Shah, C. (2016). “Coagmento 2.0: A System for Capturing Individual and Group Information Seeking Behavior.” In Proceedings of the 16th ACM/IEEE-CS on Joint Conference on Digital Libraries– JCDL ’16 (pp. 233-234). New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. The first author Matthew Mitsui is Shah’s Ph.D. student in Computer Science.
• Gave the talk “Social and Collaborative Information Seeking: Bringing Synergy in Search.” GESIS in Cologne, Germany, June 28.
• Gave the following talk June 30 at GESIS (a part of Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences) in Cologne, Germany: “Information Fostering: Proactively Complementing Information Seeking.” GESIS in Cologne, Germany.
• On July 29 gave the following talk at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada: “Social Information Seeking: Leveraging the Wisdom of the Crowd.”

And the SIGIR Conference in Pisa, Italy:

• Prof. Shah presented a tutorial on “Collaborative Information Seeking: The Art and Science of Making 1+1>2.”
• Rutgers Distinguished Professor Nicholas Belkin, Shah and Mitsui presented the following paper: Mitsui, M., Shah, C., & Belkin, N. (2016). “Extracting Information Seeking Intentions for Web Search Sessions.” In Proceedings of ACM SIGIR 2016 Conference. 4 pp. July 17-23, 2016. Pisa, Italy. It was presented by the first author Matthew Mitsui, who is a Ph.D. student in CS working with Belkin and Shah.

Prof. Mary Chayko, and Instructional Design and Technology Specialist Denise Kreiger, were interviewed on July 27 by a journalist for the Campus Technology online publication and subsequent article published “How to Design Standards-Based Online Courses.” In the article, two universities – Rutgers University and Kent State Online – share how the Quality Matters rubric informs their online course design and improves the learning experience for students.

Prof. Chayko also led an audience in a discussion of the impact of communication technology on relationships, connecting recent research on the topic to themes highlighted in the play “Water By the Spoonful” by Quiara Alegría Hudes, following its July 30 performance at Kean University’s Premiere Stages. And she was interviewed about her book “Superconnected: The Internet, Digital Media, and Techno-Social Life” on the radio program “@ Central Jersey” on Magic 98.3 WMGQ-FM, June 18 from 7:30-8 a.m.

Prof. Katharine Ognyanova was quoted in an NPR story about social media and the presidential race.

Prof. Marie Radford was quoted by Publisher’s Weekly in an article titled “The Changing World of Library Reference.”

Professor Phil Napoli delivered an invited presentation, “The Audience Revolution,” at the Journalism Transformations Conference at Ryerson University http://ryersonjournalism.ca/in Toronto.

Professor Marya Doerfel and Rutgers Business School doctoral candidate Sebastian Jayaraj presented the paper “Untying The Knots: How Simmelian Ties Guide The Evolution And Performance Of Multi-Partner Alliances” at the International Network for Social Network Analysis annual Sunbelt conference.

Professor Kaitlin Costello co-authored and published a paper with collaborators from NJIT and the Rutgers School of Public Health: Xu, S., Markson, C., Costello, K. L., Xing, C. Y., Demissie, K., & Llanos, A. A. (2016). “Leveraging Social Media to Promote Public Health Knowledge: Example of Cancer Awareness via Twitter.” JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, 2(1), e17.  They found that social media can serve as a very powerful and important tool in implementing and disseminating critical prevention, screening, and treatment messages to the community in real time.

Prof. Chirag Shah (Library and Information Science) and Prof. Todd Wolfson (Journalism and Media Studies) have been granted tenure and promotion to associate professor at The School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. Congrats to Chirag and Todd!

On April 12, “A Celebration of Books” was held at Alexander Library at Rutgers University New Brunswick Campus.  Both Superconnected: The Internet, Digital Media and Techno-Social Life (2016) written by Prof. Mary Chayko, and Collaborative Information Seeking: Best Practices, New Domains, New Thoughts (2016) co-edited by Prof. Chirag Shah, were showcased at this special event.

Prof. Susan Keith gave an invited talk “The State of U.S. Journalism: Would the Last One out of the Newsroom Please Post to Social Media and Make a Virtual Reality Film?” to the Department of Global Communications at the American University in Paris on March 22. She also participated as an invited panelist for an #EdShift live Twitter chat, “Encouraging Student Participation in Online Courses,” on April 5. #EdShift Twitter chats, sponsored by the MediaShift.org network of websites, are live discussions, via an hour-long series of tweets, about topics related to journalism, media education, and technology.

Prof. Keith Hampton discussed caller ID and other changes in voice calling communication technology in The Atlantic story titled “The Long Life (and Slow Death?) of the Prank Phone Call” on April 1.

Prof. Khadijah White consulted on the Ken Burns film Jackie Robinson and attended a special screening of the film in New York City on March 17. The film first aired on PBS on April 11-12 and is available to watch on-demand online.

Prof. Chirag Shah co-authored the recently published report, “Workshop on Social and Collaborative Information Seeking (SCIS),” in ACM SIGIR Forum. This is a report is from the Workshop on Social and Collaborative Information Seeking (SCIS), held on May 14-15, 2015 at Rutgers University. Twenty-eight participants contributed to the workshop in the form of short talks and work sessions.  Outcomes from the workshop include a “research roadmap” of important future research needed in the area of social and collaborative search.

Prof. Rebecca Reynolds presented the following paper at the 2016 iConference in Philadelphia: “Connecting Student Information Resource Uses to Learning Outcomes in Guided Discovery-based Learning.” The research study investigates middle school and high school students’ use of a wiki-based learning management system as a coordinating representation in the context of their guided discovery-based game design work.