Only one week to go, until we meet to initiate this year’s new members, award scholarships, and hear the latest in library and information science research.

As a brief preview of the meeting, we are delighted to be able to share with the abstracts that our speakers have provided.

Dr. Diana Floegel: Oppression and Marginalization in Queer Fandoms Online

Online spaces such as social media platforms have been lauded for their potential to be “great equalizers,” but in reality, they reify existing oppressions. Our understanding of how oppression manifests online is largely limited to how “Big Tech” platforms like Facebook and Twitter operate. However, many other types of platform exist on the internet, and some of these spaces explicitly try to be inclusive of people with traditionally marginalized identities. Dr. Floegel’s research explores queer people’s participation in online media fandoms as a context through which to examine how connections between people’s practices and platforms’ policies produce marginalization within seemingly inclusive digital environments. Their talk specifically focuses on how structural power dynamics including racism, homophobia, and colonialism relate to inequitable dimensions of a) creative practices, b) community formations, and c) platform governance structures. Dr. Floegel will highlight how their findings bolster our understanding of online environments writ large and help us consider ways to develop more just and liberatory social media platforms in the near future.

Dr. Isha Ghosh: Increasing Privacy Sensitivity Through Social Interventions.

Dr. Ghosh’s research is on the human factors of privacy and security, focusing on people as social actors whose privacy behaviors are influenced by their relationships, communities and life situations. Her work lies at the intersection of social computing, data-driven privacy, and ethical systems, focusing primarily on the use of social interventions to simplify privacy decision making for individuals.

Dr. Connie Pascal: Exploring the Information Practices of Cannabis Nurses

Exploring the Information Practices of Cannabis Nurses is an interdisciplinary study that incorporates theories from information science, communication, and knowledge management to study the phenomenon of cannabis nursing through the lens of their information practices (information practices theorize and emphasize the embodiment and sociological aspects of information seeking in everyday life). The objective of the study is to discern what information practices are being employed by nurses already practicing some form of cannabis care. Designed using qualitative methods, this study looks at a sample of 31 self-described cannabis nurses who participated in semi-structured interviews This analysis produced a rich description of how this set of early adopters are seeking and selecting trusted sources of information.