Digital Commons Network^™

Open Or Openwashing? Preliminary Findings From A Content Analysis Of Publisher Websites, Courtney Waugh, Emily Carlisle-Johnston

FIMS Presentations

The term openwashing originated in 2009, when Michelle Thorne coined and defined it as the process of “spin[ning] a product or company as open, although it is not.” The term has since become more commonplace around scholars and practitioners, who sometimes call out acts of openwashing to signal that despite claims suggesting otherwise, a product, service, or company does not fulfill requirements to be Open.

A recent literature review by the authors concluded that while research on the topic is minimal, commentary on openwashing coalesces around two themes: marketing and transparency. Openness as a virtue has become a marketing asset …

What Am I Reading?: Article-Style Native Advertisements In Canadian Newspapers, Victoria Rubin, Sarah Cornwell

FIMS Presentations

Native ads are ubiquitous in the North American digital news context. Their form, content and presentational style are practically indistinguishable from regular news editorials, and thus are often mistaken for informative content by newsreaders. This advertising practice is deceptive, in that it exploits loopholes in human digital literacy. Despite this, it is flourishing as a lucrative digital news advertising format. This paper documents and compares the 2018 Canadian news editorial writing and advertising practices in an effort to highlight their similarities and differences for potential automatic detection and categorization. We collected 10 native ads and 10 editorial pieces from 4 …

Comparing Features Of Fabricated And Legitimate Political News In Digital Environments (2016-2017), Victoria Rubin, Toluwase Victor Asubiaro

FIMS Presentations

With the problem of ‘fake news’ in the digital media, there are efforts at creation of awareness, automation of ‘fake news’ detection and news literacy. This research is descriptive as it pulls evidence from the content of online fabricated news for the features that distinguish fabrications from the legitimate political news around the time of the U.S. Presidential Elections (276 articles in total, from November 2016 - June 2017). Certain stylistic and psycho-linguistic features of fabrications may be apparent to the news readers: fewer words and paragraphs but longer paragraphs, more slangs, swear words and affective words in the stories. …

Educators' Perceptions Of Information Literacy And Skills Required To Spot 'Fake News', Victoria Rubin, Nicole Delellis

FIMS Presentations

This research examines the concept of 'fake news' in the context of information literacy (IL) in a post-secondary educational setting. Educators' perceptions shape both IL curricula and classroom discussions with students. We conducted 18 interviews with members of 3 integral groups implementing IL education (8 professors, 6 librarians, 4 department chairs). Interviews explored participants' perceptions of: IL education, perceived skills associated with IL, skills required to spot 'fake news', and gaged our participants' willingness to incorporate segments dedicated to detecting 'fake news' in IL curriculum. Our qualitative findings identify a substantial overlap that exists between skills associated with IL and …

Information Into Action? Reflections On (Critical) Practice (Keynote Address, Wilu 2018), Karen Nicholson

FIMS Presentations

In this keynote address, I consider the WILU 2018 conference theme “Information into Action" as representative of normative mainstream discourses of innovation, entrepreneurialism, vocation, and practicality in contemporary academic libraries.

The "Value Agenda": Negotiating A Path Between Compliance And Critical Practice, Karen P. Nicholson

FIMS Presentations

No abstract provided.

The Protection Of Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights, Melissa Seelye

FIMS Presentations

Librarians and archivists have played prominent roles in initiatives aimed at preserving indigenous cultural heritage in recent decades. Such initiatives have evolved in response to the relative lack of legal protections for indigenous cultural heritage of an intangible nature, especially compared to title laws intended to regulate the use of indigenous lands, burial sites, and plants. Even non-legally binding resolutions that take a holistic approach to indigenous property have proven contentious, with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) having only been ratified in 2007, despite being drafted in 1993. Grounded in a critical understanding of …

All In For Privacy: Cultivating A Community Of Information Privacy Awareness, Lindsay Taylor, Marni R. Harrington, Matt Ward

FIMS Presentations

The Library Freedom Project supports librarianship’s values of freedom of information and privacy by providing relevant tools and education to LIS professionals. A group from the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western aligned with the project to encourage student participation in local and global privacy issues. Our programming encourages hands-on use of open source and anti-surveillance software, such as Tor Browser for anonymous web browsing. In addition, we detail how we configured our Tor relay to route anonymous encrypted global traffic, so that other libraries can join the 280 relays currently running in Canada and 7000 worldwide.

Local Actions/Global Implications: The Economic And Social Impacts Of Oa Publishing, Cal Murgu

FIMS Presentations

The second speaker will highlight the increased impact of open access publications compared to subscription-based publications, as shown in citation-based studies as well as altmetrics such as download reports. In order to access research published in a non-open access publication, readers must either be affiliated with an institution that subscribes to the publication, purchase an individual subscription, or pay to view/rent a particular article. Taking Scholarship@Western as a case in point, the second speaker will demonstrate the global impact of open access research. Because the content published in Scholarship@Western is indexed by Google and Google Scholar, researchers all around the …

Perceptions Of Clickbait: A Q-Methodology Approach, Yimin Chen, Victoria L. Rubin

FIMS Presentations

Clickbait is “content whose main purpose is to attract attention and encourage visitors to click on a link to a particular web page” (“clickbait,” n.d.). The term is also generally used to refer specifically to the attention-grabbing headlines. Critics of clickbait argue that clickbait is shallow, misleading, and ubiquitous – “a new word that has become synonymous with online journalism” (Frampton, 2015). It is the subject of a small, but growing number of studies in disciplines ranging from linguistics, communications, and information sciences. Palau-Sampio (2016) analyzed linguistic strategies associated with tabloid journalism in the Spanish digital newspaper Elpais.com, concluding that …

Native Advertising: Ads In Disguise As Editorials, Sarah Cornwell, Victoria L. Rubin

FIMS Presentations

Native advertising, paid for by corporate funding, may fool news readers into thinking that they are reading investigative journalism editorials. Such misleading practice constitutes an internal threat to the profession of journalism and may further deteriorate mainstream media trust. If information users are unaware of the Native Ads original promotional nature, they may find themselves insufficiently informed or mislead by its content. This study investigates cases of Native Ads in terms of their contextual use, distinctive features, and likeness to editorials. LIS should aim to provide clear discernment guidelines and consider automated user alerts.

Deception Detection & Rumor Debunking, Victoria L. Rubin

FIMS Presentations

(1) Deception Detection and (2) Rumor Debunking, as the title suggests,and I will argue for the need of hybrid methods (in a combination of the two). My main goal here is to point researchers interested in social media research towards these 2 exciting fields. I predict that such technologies (with more R&D, as they mature) will become indispensable in our attention-economy. Content producers are rushed to be first in the news stream, and social media consumers simply don’t have time or energy to verify content that is pushed at them.

News Verification Suite: Towards System Design To Supplement Reporters’ And Editors’ Judgements, Victoria L. Rubin

FIMS Presentations

The News Verification Suite aims to provide users with a set of functions to verify information in the news. This paper offers a conceptual basis and a vision of system elements towards automated fact-checking in news production, curation, and consumption. The traditional model of journalism is compared to ‘news sharing a.s.a.p.’, highlighting similarities between journalistic criteria of excellence and LIS mandates for credibility and information quality. Potential steps for intervention with text-analytical technologies are identified – deception detection, rumor busting, satire labeling; they are nascent but feasible. Automated news verification can support and supplement news producers’ and news readers’ decision-making.

The Him Career Matrix: Illuminating A Framework For Professional Advancement, Elaine M. Zibrowski, Kelly J. Adams

FIMS Presentations

This project sought out to develop the first, Canadian HIM career matrix in order to:

1. Support a common language to describe the seven core competency areas in which HIM professionals can work;

2. Describe new and evolving roles in HIM in Canada;
3. Provide information on advanced career options available within our profession; and
4. Seek consensus around the common functions performed by Canadian HIM professionals

Awareness And Perception Of Copyright Among Teaching Faculty At Canadian Universities, Lisa Di Valentino

FIMS Presentations

In this talk I discuss the results of a survey of Canadian university faculty members undertaken from October to December 2014. The survey sought to determine teaching faculty awareness of copyright law and institutional policy and training, and how they would respond in various scenarios.

Analysis of the results suggests that while faculty members are aware of the existence of their institution's copyright policy, much fewer know whether their institution offers training. Of those who do know about training, only one-third have attended. However, faculty who have attended copyright training find that their knowledge is enhanced by the experience.

It …

Towards News Verification: Deception Detection Methods For News Discourse, Yimin Chen, Victoria L. Rubin, Niall Conroy

FIMS Presentations

News verification is a process of determining whether a particular news report is truthful or deceptive. Deliberately deceptive (fabricated) news creates false conclusions in the readers’ minds. Truthful (authentic) news matches the writer’s knowledge. How do you tell the difference between the two in an automated way? To investigate this question, we analyzed rhetorical structures, discourse constituent parts and their coherence relations in deceptive and truthful news sample from NPR’s “Bluff the Listener”. Subsequently, we applied a vector space model to cluster the news by discourse feature similarity, achieving 63% accuracy. Our predictive model is not significantly better than chance …

Licence Agreements And Copyright: An Examination Of The Issues, Lisa Di Valentino

FIMS Presentations

In this presentation I will discuss some of the factors that are relevant to an understanding of the relationship between copyright and private ordering of legal obligations such as licensing agreements and technological protection measures. I will conclude that there is a strong argument to be made that provisions purporting to limit fair dealing and other exceptions may be unenforceable.

Highs And Lows: An Examination Of Academic Librarians’ Collective Agreements., Marni Harrington, Natasha Gerolami

FIMS Presentations

The following study is a textual analysis of collective agreements from Canadian Universities that include provisions for librarians. There has for many years been a focus on the “crisis in librarianship.” The hope with this research is to celebrate the victories and highlight how collective agreements are foundations upon which librarians can build. The collective agreements act as signposts of the gains that librarians have made over the years in negotiations with administration and as advocates on campuses across the country. This project documents the advances librarians have made and makes recommendations for areas where further activism may be needed. …

Interviews With Lifelong Readers: Preliminary Findings From The Edits (Effects Of Digital Information Technology On Seniors) Project, Anabel Quan-Haase, Kathleen Schreurs, Kim Martin

FIMS Presentations

This poster outlines the preliminarily findings of the EDITS study: an inquiry into the digital information habits of senior citizens. The research presented here will focus on the adoption of ereading technology by seniors in order to determine the habits and attitudes, motivations, and barriers experienced by this demographic. Employing semi-structured interviews and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), this study aims to investigate one element of the digital divide that sometimes goes unnoticed: age. Despite ingrained habits based on print, findings show motivations, such as convenience, contribute to the adoption of ereading by seniors.

Open Access: Historical Highlights, Issues And Policies, Paul St-Pierre, Lisa Di Valentino, Samuel Trosow

FIMS Presentations

Print publishing relies on enclosure of information in a physical object (book). The digital environment potentially increases access (online journals). Publishers, however, can implement control beyond that which is possible in a print world; for example, license agreements that try to restrict user rights such as fair dealing. Open access is an increasingly popular publishing option, and represents a progressive application of technology and alternatives to traditional intellectual property. This moderated panel discussion with University of Western Ontario scholars, is an introduction to the origins of problems in scholarly publishing, current open access initiatives, and educational policies.

Fippa Requests : A How-To Workshop, Lisa Di Valentino

FIMS Presentations

Ontario's Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act regulates information privacy and access to information in the public sector. It applies to information held by the provincial government and its agencies, including colleges and universities. Provincial institutions must delegate an officer to handle such requests, and deal directly with the individual who is seeking access. Appeals of the institution's decision are handled by the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner. This workshop will cover the process of filing a formal information request, tips for ensuring that you obtain relevant
records, and how to challenge an institution's decision to withhold information.

Access Copyright & Technology: Legal And Policy Issues In Education, Lisa Di Valentino

FIMS Presentations

Access Copyright is a collective organization representing the
copyright interests of publishers and creators. The collective offers
copyright licences that allow certain limited uses of works in the
collective's repertoire. The use of collective licences as part of
copyright management policy was common in post-secondary education
administration until 2010, when many universities opted out of a
contractual relationship with Access Copyright.

The growing movement towards online open access publishing and
Creative Commons public licensing has made information more widely
available without requiring payment and with fewer restrictions on
use. The addition of education to the list of fair dealing purposes …

Who's In Charge Here? Information Privacy In A Social Networking World, Lisa Di Valentino

FIMS Presentations

No abstract provided.

Access Copyright: What Does It Mean For Western? A Librarian’S Guide, Alan Kilpatrick

FIMS Presentations

Western was one of the first universities to sign an Access Copyright Agreement. Alan Kilpatrick, an MLIS Candidate, will present the details of this agreement and discuss how it affects libraries and librarians at Western. This is a great opportunity for students interested in academic librarianship and practising academic librarians to discuss the implications of this agreement.

Democratizing Access To Knowledge: Find Out What Open Educational Resources (Oer) Have To Offer, Michael B. Mcnally

FIMS Presentations

This presentation provides an overview of Open Educational Resources (OER). It begins by describing what OER are and why they are important. It then examines where OER can be found and provides some screenshots of the OER Commons, MIT`s Open Courseware Initiative and Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT). The presentation also covers copyright and licensing issues, including a description of the Creative Commons licensing system. It concludes with a brief discussion of how to create OER and provides additional references and resources.

Internet Filtering In The Public Library: The Case Of London Ontario, Samuel E. Trosow

FIMS Presentations

No abstract provided.

Mobilizing User-Generated Content For Canada’S Digital Content Advantage, Michael Mcnally, Caroline Whippey, Lola Wong

FIMS Presentations

No abstract provided.

Another Look At Bill C-32 And The Access Copyright Tariff: Still Double Trouble For Higher Education, Samuel E. Trosow

FIMS Presentations

Earlier this year, the government tabled Bill C-32, proposed amendments to the Copyright Act. Following a consultation process, the Bill is widely recognized as more reasonable than its predecessor, Bill C-61. On the positive side, the bill would expand fair dealing to explicitly include "education". On the other hand, the digital locks provisions of the Bill are fundamentally flawed and override many existing and proposed users rights. Also this year, Access Copyright filed a proposed tariff for the post-secondary education sector with the Copyright Board. The proposal, which includes a drastic increase in costs as well as numerous new reporting …

Bill C-32 And The Access Copyright Tariff: Double Trouble For Educators And Students, Samuel E. Trosow

FIMS Presentations

No abstract provided.

Methodological Strategies For Studying Documentary Planning Work., Pamela J. Mckenzie, Elizabeth Davies, Lola Wong

FIMS Presentations

This paper reports on the pilot testing of data collection strategies for a study of the complex and idiosyncratic document work involved in everyday life planning and time management. We describe two iterations of two data collection strategies, in-depth semi-structured interviews and photography of individual documents and document collections.

Cette communication prente un projet pilote de straties de collecte de donns pour l'ude du travail documentaire complexe et idiosyncratique nessaire la planification et la gestion du temps au quotidien. Seront prents deux itations de deux straties de collecte de donns : les entrevues en profondeur semi-structurs et la photographie de …