The School of Communication and Information’s iSchool faculty and students will participate in the 84th annual meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), scheduled from October 29 – November 2 in Salt Lake City, Utah. ASIS&T is offering the conference in a hybrid format to allow both virtual and in-person attendance and presentations, and this year’s theme is “Information: Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Justice, and Relevance.”

As noted on the conference’s website, “For 84 years, ASIS&T researchers and practitioners, along with those from related fields, have been pushing advancements in information understanding, technology, and use, making substantial progress and contributions. However, the nirvana hinted at by Vannevar Bush with the sum total of human knowledge at our fingertips is not so blissful. With the advantages, we also see hate speech, rumors, conspiracy theories, cyberbullying, AI systems turned racist, fake news, click fraud, adversarial IR, privacy concerns—the list goes on. What happened? As the premier international conference dedicated to the study of information, people, and technology in contemporary society, the ASIS&T Annual Meeting is a forum to assist in addressing these issues as we continue to push forward the positive contributions of information and technology.”

We invite you to view the events listed to learn more about our exciting new research. On Friday, October 29, Associate Professor of Library and Information Science Vivek K. Singh and his colleagues will present a workshop, Social Media Research, Challenges, and Opportunities (SIG-SM).

On Sunday, October 31, doctoral student Daniel Houli, Chair and Professor of Library and Information Science Marie L. Radford, and Associate Professor of Library and Information Science Vivek K. Singh will participate in Paper Session 05: Trust in Technology, “COVID19 is_’: The Perpetuation of Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories via Google Autocomplete.”

Monday, November 1, Associate Professor of Library and Information Science Rebecca Reynolds, doctoral students Julie Aromi and Catherine McGowan, and Assistant Professor of Library and Information Science Britt Paris will present their research during Paper Session 15: Infrastructure and Inequality, “Social and Digital Inequality as Factors in K-12 Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning in the Pandemic of 2020: Educator Perspectives.”

Also on November 1, there will be an in-person poster presentation of the study, “Gendered Sounds in Household Devices: Results from an Online Search Case Study,” featuring the research of Post-doctoral Associate in Library and Information Science (NSF Projects) Chidansh Bhatt, Distinguished Teaching Professor of Communication and Information Mary Chayko, Information Technology and Informatics undergraduate student Jacob Roy, and Associate Professor of Library and Information Science Vivek K. Singh. A virtual viewing is scheduled for November 2.

View the complete ASIS&T conference agenda here.