No. 474 - October 20, 2021

  • Coming Events:

    - "Selling 'Silence' in Contemporary Horror: Krasinski's Quiet Consumers"
    - "A Conversation About Researching Digital Media Literacy in Canada"
    - "Studying the COVID-19 Infodemic at Scale"
    - Social Media Workshop: "Computational Approaches to Studying Anti-Social Behaviour in Social Media"
    - "Inscribing creditability: finance, letter-writing manuals, and the rise of a plausible public 'self' in the long 18th century"
    - FIMSwrites - Virtual Edition

  • Important Dates:

    - Friday, October 22, 2021 - Virtual Autumn 2021 Convocation (7PM ceremony)
    - Monday, November 1, 2021 - Friday, November 5, 2021 - Undergraduate Reading Week & MMJC/MLIS Research Week (no classes)

  • Publications & Presentations:

    - Melissa Adler
    - Isola Ajiferuke
    - Jacquelyn Burkell
    - Elisabeth Davies (LIS PhD'07)
    - Pam McKenzie
    - Peggy Nzomo (LIS PhD'15)
    - Luke Stark
    - Liwen Vaughan
    - Jinman Zhang

  • In the Media:

    - Colm Cobb Howes (MMJC'21)
    - David McPherson (MA'98, Journalism)
    - Sarah Meilleur (MLIS'05)
    - Daniel Robinson
    - Luke Stark

  • News from the FIMS Graduate Library:

    - Bookbinding for Inmates, with Regional Librarian Kelli Jerome
    - FIMS Graduate Library Fall Book Club
    - Zotero Video

  • Next Issue:


Coming Events


"Selling 'Silence' in Contemporary Horror: Krasinski's Quiet Consumers"
Wednesday, October 27, 2021
12:00 p.m - 1:00 p.m.
Zoom (by registration)
Presented by Professor Selma Purac as part of the FIMS Seminar Series.
All are welcome to attend. Contact Karen Kueneman for the Zoom link at kueneman@uwo.ca.
Abstract: While John Krasinski's 2018 film A Quiet Place was celebrated by many for its unconventional silence, the film is in fact rooted in horror cinema's long-standing experimentation with sound, stretching as far back as the silent era. The film's initial script and its marketing, however, prove to be less traditional than the movie itself. Ultimately, these unique paratexts succeed in selling - first to producers and then to the public - what was otherwise a conventional, albeit intriguing film, and they do so through their own sonic experimentation (continue reading).

"A Conversation About Researching Digital Media Literacy in Canada" 
Thursday, October 28, 2021
12:30 p.m.
Zoom (Register here)
Featuring FIMS Professor Jacquelyn Burkell as panelist. Presented by Media Smarts for Media Literacy Week 2021.
Abstract: This event will bring together academics to intentionally discuss researching digital media literacy in Canada. Through a discussion of their recent/current projects, panelists will highlight different approaches to studying key digital media literacy issues including: digital equity and inclusion; the use of multi-media in the classroom; social media and big data analysis; and artificial intelligence and online privacy (continue reading).

"Studying the COVID-19 Infodemic at Scale"
Thursday, October 28, 2021
3:30 p.m.
Zoom Link
Featuring Anatoliy Gruzd, CRC in Privacy-Preserving Digital Technologies and Director of Research at the Social Media Lab, Toronto, as part of the 2021/2022 FIMS Rogers Chair event series. Everyone is welcome.
Abstract: False narratives about COVID-19 have gone global and are spreading almost as fast as the virus itself. Since January 2020, there have been over 10,000 false and unproven COVID-19 related claims shared via social media and other channels. This presentation will discuss how researchers at Ryerson University's Social Media Lab, in partnership with the World Health Organization (WHO), are spearheading an international effort to help stem the rise and counter COVID-19 misinformation via the COVID-19 Misinformation Portal. More event information available here.

Social Media Workshop: "Computational Approaches to Studying Anti-Social Behaviour in Social Media"
Friday, October 29, 2021
10:00 a.m - 12:00 p.m.
Zoom (Register here)
Featuring Anatoliy Gruzd, CRC in Privacy-Preserving Digital Technologies and Director of Research at the Social Media Lab, Toronto, as part of the 2021/2022 FIMS Rogers Chair event series. This workshop is open to FIMS graduate students.
Description: In less than a generation, social media has moved into the center of modern life. It has altered many aspects of our daily lives, from how we form and maintain social relationships to how we discover, access and share information online. However, the same platforms have also given way to troublesome anti-social behaviours such as online trolling, cyberbullying, and expressions of hate speech. In some online communities, what is commonly referred to as 'anti-social' may be a communal norm and a way to socialize. But, that is not the case in most online communities where such behaviour may negatively affect the overall group cohesion and may have psychological and emotional consequences for individual social media users.

This workshop will demonstrate how to use automated content analysis to detect and study anti-social behaviours present in social media. The presentation will introduce and discuss advantages and disadvantages of two common approaches often used to detect instances of 'anti-social' behaviour in online discourse: lexicon-based and machine learning approaches. The presentation will conclude with the introduction of Communalytic, a new online research tool for studying online communities. More workshop information available on the Western Events page and the mediations Facebook event page.

"Inscribing creditability: finance, letter-writing manuals, and the rise of a plausible public 'self' in the long 18th century"
Wednesday, November 10, 2021
12:00 p.m - 1:00 p.m.
Zoom (by registration)
Presented by Professor Alison Hearn as part of the FIMS Seminar Series.
All are welcome to attend. Contact Karen Kueneman for the Zoom link at kueneman@uwo.ca.
Abstract: This presentation comprises the first chapter of a book project entitled Reputational Capital: An episodic history, which focuses on the ways mediated forms of self-presentation and reputation-seeking have functioned within, against, and as foundational to capitalist economies of credit and debt over the past three centuries. The talk provides a pre-history to our current economic moment, where perpetual networking and self-promotion have become compulsory, enforced as "a survival discipline" (Gilligan & Vischmidt 2015), in the context of deepening economic precariousness and data-extractive platform capitalism (Srnicek 2017, Zuboff 2019), by examining the role of personal and commercial letters informed by didactic letter-writing manuals in Europe and North America during the long 18th century (continue reading).

FIMSwrites - Virtual Edition
Every Thursday
9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
Via Zoom
Do you expect to have paper, story, article, report, thesis, or book deadlines coming up? Does having other people writing around you help keep you on-task? Then join FIMSWrites, an informal initiative to provide some solidarity in the sometimes-solitary writing process. All FIMS graduate students, staff and faculty are welcome to bring their favourite writing devices and join us to write and check in. If you're interested, contact Pam McKenzie at pmckenzi@uwo.ca.


Important Dates


- Friday, October 22, 2021 - Virtual Autumn 2021 Convocation (7PM ceremony)
- Monday, November 1, 2021 - Friday, November 5, 2021 - Undergraduate Reading Week & MMJC/MLIS Research Week (no classes)


Publications & Presentations


Assistant Professor Melissa Adler presented "Useful and Beautiful: Toward Reparative Knowledge Organisation Techniques" in the panel "An Exquisite Corpse: Experiments in Practicing Better Relations as Scholars in Uncertain Times" at the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) annual meeting. She also presented the "Useful+Beautiful" project in the Making & Doing Session of 4S with Hazel Jane Plante (SFU), Gretchen Alexander (Pratt), and Julia Bell (Software designer).

Peggy Nzomo (LIS PhD'15), Professor Pam McKenzie, Associate Professor Isola Ajiferuke and Professor Emeritus Liwen Vaughan published the following article:
Peggy Nzomo, Pamela McKenzie, Isola Ajiferuke & Liwen Vaughan (2021). Towards a Definition of Multilingual Information Literacy (MLIL): An Essential Skill for the 21st Century. Journal of Library Administration, 61:7, 897-920, DOI: 10.1080/01930826.2021.1972737

McKenzie also published the following article with Elisabeth Davies (LIS PhD'07):
McKenzie, P.J. and Davies, E. (2021), "Documenting multiple temporalities", Journal of Documentation, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-11-2020-0196

Associate Professor Jacquelyn Burkell co-authored the article, "Why Facebook and other social media companies need to be reined in," published in The Conversation on October 18, 2021. 

Assistant Professor Luke Stark presented the virtual seminar, "Ordering Emotion: AI and Feelings, Past, Present, and Future," at Royal Holloway University of London's Information Security Group Research Seminars on October 7, 2021. Stark was also a discussant in "Human-Computer Entanglements: Psychology, Computing, and Artificial Intelligence in the 20th Century," at the Society for the Social Studies of Science's (4S) annual meeting on October 8, 2021. 

Stark is also an invited discussant at Marquette University's upcoming Virtual Symposium on "Applied Algorithmic Ethics", on November 4, 2021.

Jinman Zhang, Media Studies PhD candidate, published an article titled "Feminist responses on Weibo aim to fight the misrepresentation of women during COVID-19 in China", in The Conversation, on October 12, 2021.


In the Media


Colm Cobb Howes (MMJC'21) was featured in the Western News article, "Work with Indigenous communities leads to media career for new grad," published on October 19, 2021. 

David McPherson (MA'98, Journalism) was featured in the Western News article, "Marking the 'magical musical moments' of Massey Hall," published on October 14, 2021. His upcoming book, Massey Hall, will be released on November 2, 2021. 

Sarah Meilleur (MLIS'05) was featured in the article, "Fortney: Sarah Meilleur named first female CEO of Calgary Public Library," published by the Calgary Herald on October 8, 2021. 

Associate Professor Daniel Robinson was interviewed on The Champlain Society's Witness to Yesterday Podcast on October 8, 2021. He discussed how smoking became a habit by the early postwar period and the inspiration behind his new book Cigarette Nation: Business, Health, and Canadian Smokers, 1930-1975. 

Assistant Professor Luke Stark was interviewed for the article, "Canada's laws need updating to protect against abuse from surveillance tech, watchdog says" published by CBC Radio's Spark on October 8, 2021.


News from the FIMS Graduate Library


Your FIMS Graduate Library presents...
Take advantage of your chance to learn beyond your classes.

Bookbinding for Inmates, with Regional Librarian Kelli Jerome: 12 noon on Wednesday, October 27th (FNB 3020)
This hands-on presentation is the beginning of a regular event to support literacy in Institutional Libraries. As Kelli Jerome introduces her role as a Regional Librarian for inmates institutionalized in the Western Region of Ontario, we will learn how to remove hardcovers from donated books and rebind for distribution.
Please RSVP by emailing us at fimslib@uwo.ca. 

FIMS Graduate Library Fall Book Club: 2pm on Thursday, November 25 (synchronous on Zoom and FNB 3020)
As part of our effort to highlight the selections from this year's First Nation Communities Read (FNCR) Awards, we've chosen Michelle Good's Five Little Indians as the focus of our Fall Book Club. Good's novel tells the stories of Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie, five friends who have been released from a church-run residential school and "chronicles the desperate quest of these residential school survivors to come to terms with their past and, ultimately, find a way forward" (from the book jacket). In addition to being shortlisted in the YA/Adult category of FNCR, Good's novel has become a National Bestseller and has won numerous awards, including the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction.
Copies of Five Little Indians are available for loan in the FIMS Graduate Library and are widely available in many public and academic libraries.

Zotero Video
Thanks to all those who attended our Zotero workshops. Students in the library often tell us what a big impact citation management tools have on their ability to organize their research and citations, so we love spreading the word about these tools and helping students learn how to use them. For those who were unable to attend a workshop but are interested in learning more about Zotero, please see our video, An Introduction to Zotero, and feel free to reach out to us for help.

Have ideas for future workshops that you'd like to attend? Email us at fimslib@uwo.ca. We'd love to hear from you!


Next Issue


The Grad Bulletin is your source for news, announcements, and events pertaining to FIMS graduate programs. Submissions from the FIMS community are always welcome and may be sent via e-mail to fims-communications@uwo.ca.

The next issue will be published on Wednesday, November 3, 2021. The deadline for submissions is noon on Tuesday, November 2, 2021.