Choose Not To Warn: Trigger Warnings and the Production of Knowledge in Feminist Fandom
May 10, 2016
11 am – 12 pm
2116 Hornbake Bldg, South Wing
Speaker: Alexis Lothian, Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies/LGBT Studies, University of Maryland, College Park
Abstract: The question of whether to use “trigger warnings” in classroom spaces has spawned intense debates in feminist academia. This paper explores the history of similar discussions in fan communities, where feminist-oriented fans have been debating strategies to navigate fraught landscapes of representation and trauma for more than a decade. In contrast to academics’ predominant concerns with surveillance, academic freedom, and neoliberal commodification of the self, fans’ arguments over warnings center questions of disability and access, working toward the creation of counterpublic spaces on and offline that attend to the complexities of affect and the interdependence of structural violence, pleasure, and critique.
Examining the Team Performance Benefits of Emotional Attachment Toward Robots
Apr 26, 2016
11 am – 12 pm
2116 Hornbake Bldg, South Wing
Speaker: Lionel P. Robert, Jr.
Dr. Lionel P. Robert, Jr. is currently an Assistant Professor of Information at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, School of Information where he was awarded the Carnegie Junior Faculty Development Fellowship. Dr. Robert was a BAT doctoral fellow and KPMG scholar at Indiana University where he completed his Ph.D. in Information Systems and minored in Social Informatics. His current research focuses on how technologies alter teamwork and how technologies can be used to improve teamwork. He is a member of the Michigan Interactive and Social Computing (MISC) and Information Behavior and Interaction Research Groups at the University of Michigan. He is also an affiliate of the Center for Computer-Mediated Communication at Indiana University. He is currently the Academy of Management OCIS Division Representative at Large and the outgoing President of AIS SIG in Cognitive Research. He has published in various outlets such as Information Systems Research, the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), and the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI). He has also written a book entitled Social Capital and Knowledge Integration in Virtual Teams.
Emergence of Communication in Socio-Biological Networks
11 am – 12 pm
2116 Hornbake Bldg, South Wing
Social Media and Political Signaling: Learning from Twitter Use in Indian Politics
11 am – 12 pm
2116 Hornbake Bldg, South Wing
Enhancing Journalistic Curation of Online News Comments
11 am – 12 pm
2116 Hornbake Bldg, South Wing
Interviewing Data – Interpretation and analytics
11 am – 12 pm
2116 Hornbake Bldg, South Wing
Anne L. Washington is an Assistant Professor in the Organization Development and Knowledge Management Program in the George Mason University School of Public Policy. Her research investigates socio-technical aspects of transparency initiatives and electronic government projects.In 2012, she was the first U.S. citizen to be invited as a fellow with the Peter Pribilla Foundation at the Leipzig Graduate School of Management and Technical University of Munich (TUM). As an international team of scholars, the Pribilla fellows investigated the relationship between learning, failure and leadership in building innovation. She investigated how data fails and the role of innovation in government technology. Political informatics , or poli-Informatics, is her current three-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant that brings big data principles to the study of government and politics. She is leading a group of colleagues in using open government data to build research capacity for data intensive research. The topic of the 2012-2015 project is using computational analysis to better understand the financial crisis.She completed a PhD from The George Washington University School of Business. Her primary field was Information Systems and Technology Management and her secondary field was Organization Behavior. Her dissertation investigated the use of search technology by Congressional staff using theories of organization sensemaking. She holds a Bachelors of Arts (BA) in computer science from Brown University and a Masters in Library Information Science (MLIS) from Rutgers University. Dr. Mary Granger at The George Washington University, Dr. Nick Belkin at Rutgers University and Dr. Stan Zdonik at Brown University have been her academic advisors.Before completing her PhD, she had extensive work experience in financial services and the technology industries. After working for software development firms including the Claris Software division of Apple Computers, she worked for Barclays Global Investors in multiple technology and corporate training positions. She also was with the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress specializing in legislative systems for nine years. Since 2008, she has served as an invited expert to the W3C E-Government Interest Group and the W3C Government Linked Data Working Group.
Algorithms and statistical models produce consistent results with confidence yet they do so with data that are subject to change. Furthermore, the underlying digital traces created within specifically designed platforms are rarely transparent. The emerging field which incorporates analytics, predictive behavior, big data, and data science, is still contesting its methodological boundaries. How can we use existing research tools to validate the reliability of the data? This paper explores alternatives to statistical validity by situating analytics as a form of naturalistic inquiry. A naturalistic research model, which has no assumption of an objective truth, places greater emphasis on logical reasoning and researcher reflectivity. “Interviewing data”, based on journalistic practices, is introduced as a tool to convey the reliability of the data. The misleading 2013 flu prediction illustrates this approach and is discussed within the context of ethics and accountability in data science.
(Joint HCIL/CASCI event) Citizen Interaction Design and its Implications for HCI
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm
2105 Hornbake Bldg, South Wing (HCIL)