Anabel Quan-Haase

The University of Western Ontario | UWO · Faculty of Information and Media Studies

Cyberbullying is a problem in educational settings, and much of the research has focused on the development of effective prevention and response initiatives. Because of the vulnerability of children, cyberbullying research and intervention programs have largely targeted elementary students. A growing body of research has shown that cyberbullying is...

Drawing from a thematic analysis of 960 tweets for English, 960 tweets for German, and 753 tweets for Mandarin, this article explores how the #MeToo movement was taken up and used in different ways in the first 12 months. The article achieves this by drawing on the concept of platform vernacular, identifying three new, at times overlapping, vernacu...

This study investigates how gender-focused nonprofit organizations used Twitter to advocate on behalf of women and girls during the initial stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. We collected tweets from five nonprofits including Canadian Women’s Foundation, Anova, UN Women, National Organization for Women, and Planned Parenthood. Through thematic analysi...

Digital media is essential for sustaining communication with various types of social ties. However, older adults (aged 65+) are reported to be the least likely to use digital media. While statistics show that older adults are increasingly using more digital media, evidence shows this is predominantly aging long-term users of digital media rather th...

The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global crisis that has had profound impacts on people’s lives. Under these circumstances, social support can buffer against pandemic-related stress. Yet, the dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic with its stringent health guidelines have created unique challenges to the mobilization of social support. These cha...

In 2017, the #MeToo movement garnered international attention when millions of people used it to share experiences of sexual violence via social media. Through an analysis of 570 tweets randomly and purposively sampled within the first 24 hours of the movement, we were interested in answering the following questions: (1) What emotions are present i...

This paper builds on a body of work over the decades that examines how East Yorkers give and receive support. We go beyond the earlier work taking into consideration communication technologies and how they play a role in the ways people exchange social support across the life course. We draw on 101 in-depth interviews conducted in 2013–2014 to shed...

We examine how Canadians living in the East York section of Toronto exchange social support. Just as we have had to deconstruct social support to understand its component parts, we now deconstruct how different types of communication technologies play socially supportive roles. We draw on 101 in-depth interviews conducted in 2013-2014 to shed light...

Social networks are ubiquitous. The science of networks has shaped how researchers and society understand the spread of disease, the precursors of loneliness, the rise of protest movements, the causes of social inequality, the influence of social media, and much more. Egocentric analysis conceives of each individual, or ego, as embedded in a person...

We investigate locative media apps-location-based apps on mobile devices-and their potential to change how individuals experience urban settings. We argue that locative media further lead toward networked individualism. Networked individualism describes a shift toward multiple, shifting social networks rather than belonging to closely-bounded and o...

A tweet by Hollywood actress Alyssa Milano using Tarana Burke’s phrase “me too” sparked a global movement. Despite the media attention #MeToo has garnered, little is known about how scholars have studied the movement. Through a synthesis review covering sources from 2006 to 2019, we learned that in this time period only 22 studies examined particip...

Marking the 25th anniversary of the “digital divide,” we continue our metaphor of the digital inequality stack by mapping out the rapidly evolving nature of digital inequality using a broad lens. We tackle complex, and often unseen, inequalities spawned by the platform economy, automation, big data, algorithms, cybercrime, cybersafety, gaming, emot...

2020 marks the 25th anniversary of the “digital divide.” Although a quarter century has passed, legacy digital inequalities continue, and emergent digital inequalities are proliferating. Many of the initial schisms identified in 1995 are still relevant today. Twenty-five years later, foundational access inequalities continue to separate the digital...

In this article, we argue that new kinds of risk are emerging with the COVID-19 virus, and that these risks are unequally distributed. As we expose to view, digital inequalities and social inequalities are rendering certain subgroups significantly more vulnerable to exposure to COVID-19. Vulnerable populations bearing disproportionate risks include...

As news headlines report on high‐profile online privacy breaches and the potential negative consequences for users, users are becoming concerned about their privacy. While much research has focused on the concerns of younger generations, few studies have investigated older adults, specifically those aged 65+ years. This study analyzes in‐depth inte...

The platform economy is rapidly transforming the dynamics of the labor market. Optimists argue platform work functions as a social equalizer, opening opportunities for additional earnings for those who need it most. Pessimists suggest that the platform economy widens earning disparities by providing additional income to people who already have good...

We used in-depth interviews with 101 participants in the East York section of Toronto, Canada to understand how digital media affects social connectivity in general—and networked individualism in particular—for people at different stages of the life course. Although people of all ages intertwined their use of digital media with their face-to-face i...

This paper provides an introduction to the Proceedings of the 2019 International Conference on Social Media and Society (#SMSociety). The conference is an annual gathering of leading social media researchers, policy makers, and practitioners from around the world. Now in its 10th year, the 2019 conference is hosted by the Social Media Lab at the Te...

Conventional wisdom holds that the Internet is a technology for the young. However, as this chapter shows, older adults are increasingly adopting digital media, and it is therefore critical to know more about how networks of digital communication are changing their lives in such respects as their interaction with family and friends. The authors dra...

The hype around big data does not seem to abate nor do the scandals. Privacy breaches in the collection, use, and sharing of big data have affected all the major tech players, be it Facebook, Google, Apple, or Uber, and go beyond the corporate world including governments, municipalities, and educational and health institutions. What has come to lig...

Drawing on diverse theoretical and methodological approaches, this special issue takes a fresh look at the various aspects of the messy gridlock of privacy practices from the user and the producer perspectives. On the one hand, we aim to advance privacy research at the individual level in terms of scope, typology, and implications. On the other han...

Older adults (65+) use a wide range of digital media, yet have been slow in adopting social media specifically. In this paper, we explore to what extent privacy concerns could be a barrier to social media adoption in this demographic. By analyzing in-depth interviews with 40 older adult users and non-users of social media living in East York1, Toro...

This paper provides an introduction to the 2018 Proceedings of the International Conference on Social Media and Society (#SMSociety). The conference is an annual gathering of leading social media researchers, policy makers, and practitioners from around the world. Now in its 9th year, the 2018 conference is hosted by the Centre for Business Data An...

This chapter examines the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in family life from the perspective of older adults, and whether ICT use is helping to maintain and strengthen social ties within and across generations. Drawing on networked individualism as a conceptual and analytical model, it investigates social and network tran...

Although research has demonstrated a grey divide where older adults in comparison with younger adults are less involved and skilled with digital media, it has overlooked differences in older adults’ digital skills and media use by treating them as a homogenous group. Based on 41 in-depth interviews with older adults (aged 65+ years) in East York, T...

The reward system of science is undergoing significant changes, as traditional indicators compete with initiatives that offer novel means of disseminating and assessing scholarly impact. This article considers a number of aspects of this reward system, including authorship, citations, acknowledgements and the growing use of social media platforms b...

There is a growing literature on teenage and young adult users' attitudes toward and concerns about online privacy, yet little is known about older adults and their unique experiences. As older adults join the digital world in growing numbers, we need to gain a better understanding of how they experience and navigate online privacy. This paper fill...

This entry provides a brief overview of the field of the digital humanities. The entry discusses the main tenets of the digital humanities and shows its historical origins. It also discusses key current trends including big data, text analysis, and the development of digital humanities centers. The entry concludes with an examination of future deve...

We provide an overview of the concept of networked individualism and its core tenets. The theoretical origins of networked individualism are discussed with its current manifestation within the context of the rapid proliferation of the Internet and mobile devices. The core idea of the networked individualism concept is that society has moved away fr...

We investigate historians' experiences with serendip-ity in both physical and digital environments through an online survey. Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative data analyses, our preliminary findings show that many digital historians select a specific digital environment because of the expectation that it may elicit a serendipito...

We investigate historians' experiences with serendipity in both physical and digital environments through an online survey. Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative data analyses, our preliminary findings show that many digital historians select a specific digital environment because of the expectation that it may elicit a serendipitou...

How do older adults mobilize social support, with and without digital media? To investigate this, we focus on older adults 65+ residing in the Toronto locality of East York, using 42 interviews lasting about 90 minutes done in 2013–2014. We find that digital media help in mobilizing social support as well as maintaining and strengthening existing r...

Problematizing the digital literacy paradox in the context of older adults' ICT use: Aging, media discourse, and self-determination. Canadian Journal of Communication, 42(2). Abstract: Despite evidence of an upward trend in ICT adoption, current media discourse suggests that older adults (those 60+) lag behind in terms of engagement with digital te...

Résumé Humanities scholars have long claimed the importance of browsing in the library stacks as part of their research process. The digitization practices of libraries and archives, while meant to assist with preservation and access, make the physical browsing experience impossible. While there have been various attempts to recreate this experienc...

Humanities scholars have long claimed the importance of browsing in the library stacks as part of their research process. The digitization practices of libraries and archives, while meant to assist with preservation and access, make the physical browsing experience impossible. While there have been various attempts to recreate this experience onlin...

This essay examines social network analysis as both a theoretical lens to the study of social structure and a methodological approach for the collection and analysis of data. Social network analysis is defined as the study of the relational aspects of social structure, where social structure refers to the patterns of interactions among social actor...

Digital sociology is a new subfield of sociology that has challenged the discipline to engage with digital methods, information practices, and questions of societal data use. Such topics have been central to information science research for decades; however, renewed attention being called to them by sociologists creates both opportunities and chall...

Purpose Most studies pertaining to social tagging focus on one platform or platform type, thus limiting the scope of their findings. The purpose of this paper is to explore social tagging practices across four platforms in relation to cultural products associated with the book Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming. Design/methodology/approach A layered an...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the changing research practices of historians, and to contrast their experiences of serendipity in physical and digital information environments. Design/methodology/approach In total, 20 historians in Southwestern Ontario participated in semi-structured, in-depth interviews. The interviews were t...

Twenty-one seniors (aged 60+) were interviewedabout their use of digital technology. Grounded theoryand Key Point analysis were used to identify severalareas where these tools have become embedded intothe lives of seniors. These include informationseeking, news media, library usage, and readingpreferences.Vingt et un aînés (âgés de 60 ans et plus)...

This paper reports on a survey of 26 social scientistsand computer scientists. Through the vignettetechnique, resource use in situations in whichscholars have a lot and very little time were explored.Findings suggest academic discipline and time mayplay a role in resource use.Cette présentation rend compte d’une enquêteauprès de 26 spécialistes en...

We explore the words academics (N = 26) in Germanyuse to describe unexpected and useful experienceswith information. We further report on the perceptionsof a portion of the participants’ experiences during anexploratory work task and a follow-up survey designedto capture reports of serendipity several days later.Nous explorons les mots que les univ...

Digital oblivion has sparked heated much debate since the right to be forgotten ruling of the European Court of Justice on May 13, 2014. This study analyses the (positive and negative) voiced by Twitter users with regard to the RTBF ruling and its development based on 30,894 tweets from 18,959 users. Our results show that the majority of Twitter us...

Much research has sought to understand serendipity and how it may be hindered or facilitated in the context of digital environments such as information visualization systems, mobile apps, and social media. Twitter has been described in both the popular media and academic literature as an ideal space for serendipity to occur, though little research...

Twenty academic historians in Southern Ontario were interviewed about their use of e-books and the role of serendipity in their research. Our findings show that serendipity continues to occur in physical environments, most often the stacks. By contrast, digital tools and texts is limiting historians’ opportunity for a chance encounter with informat...

We explore how the common elements of serendipity identified in previous models may be used to identify different approaches to the design of digital environments to support serendipity. Three approaches are examined: social search, recommender systems, and visualization. Nous explorons la façon dont les éléments communs de la sérendipité identifié...

Since the ruling of the European Court of Justice, the right to be forgotten has provided more informational self-determination to users, whilst raising new questions around Google’s role as arbiter of online content and the power to rewrite history. We investigated the debate that unfolded on Twitter around the #righttobeforgotten through social n...

This chapter presents a model of social media engagement. The model’s components–presentation of self, action and participation, uses and gratifications, positive experiences, usage and activity counts, and social context–are discussed in depth with relevant evidence and examples. The model supports the main thrust of the chapter to combine tangibl...

The present study relies on the 2010 Canadian Internet Use Survey to investigate differences in people's access to the internet and level of online activity. The study not only revisits the digital divide in the Canadian context, but also expands current investigations by including an analysis of how demographic factors affect social networking sit...

For two decades, research has sought to understand serendipity and how it may be facilitated in digital environments such as information visualizations systems, search systems, and social media. The motivation to support serendipity comes from its association with positive outcomes that range from personal benefits to global rewards. To date, resea...

Building upon well-established paradigms brought forth by such theorists as Robert K. Merton, Pierre Bourdieu, and Blaise Cronin, the panel will span the full cycle of academic production to show, through various bibliometric measures and other quantitative and qualitative analyses, how the reward system of science is evolving. While there is stron...

The literature on the digital divide suggests that seniors continue to lag behind in access to the Internet, digital skills, and engagement in various online activities. Much of the research, however, gains insight from large-scale survey research and neglects to examine the challenges and opportunities that digital seniors, those who are connected...

Research on Facebook has primarily focused on the benefits of social connectivity, paying little attention to the ways in which this social networking site complicates the termination of romantic relationships. The present exploratory study employs a mixed-methods approach to examine the breakup practices of young people on Facebook and to develop...

While the field of digital inequality continues to expand in many directions, the relationship between digital inequalities and other forms of inequality has yet to be fully appreciated. This article invites social scientists in and outside the field of digital media studies to attend to digital inequality, both as a substantive problem and as a me...

Big Data research is currently split on whether and to what extent Twitter can be characterized as an informational or social network. We contribute to this line of inquiry through an investigation of digital humanities (DH) scholars’ uses and gratifications of Twitter. We conducted a thematic analysis of 25 semi-structured interview transcripts to...

What interface features of academic digital libraries (DLs) do scholars use when engaging in an exploratory search task? We compare social scientists? and computer scientists? use of interface features in domain-specific DLs to demonstrate what features may lead to useful and unexpected findings of information. Applying a search user interface fram...

To what extent does networked scholarship in the humanities parallel established models in the sciences? The present study examines the connections of a 7-year interdisciplinary, dispersed, collaborative network composed of 33 humanities scholars investigating the Hispanic Baroque. Our findings suggest that project membership leads to greater netwo...

This chapter investigates how the UG approach can be applied to the study of social media, describing its potential for yielding new insights as well as its methodological challenges. It starts with a general overview of the approach that includes definitions of key concepts, an outline of central tenets, and an overview of the historical context i...

A debate has emerged in library literature concerning the advantages and disadvantages of adopting social media applications in academic libraries. This research examines the ubiquity of social media through a longitudinal study of the adoption rates and usage patterns of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr at academic libraries in the Canadian...

The present study relies on the 2010 Canadian Internet Use Survey to investigate differences in people's access to the internet and level of online activity. The study not only revisits the digital divide in the Canadian context, but also expands current investigations by including an analysis of how demographic factors affect social networking sit...

Proceedings of the CAIS/ACSI 2012 conference.

Introduction. This paper aims to understand the adoption of e-books and e-readers by persons aged sixty and above. This includes an investigation into where seniors are in the stages of e-book adoption. Method. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews in a mid-size city in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. Analysis. Interviews were transc...

The application of social media by academic libraries is re-shaping traditional ideas of library services. The use of social media in Ontario’s university libraries demonstrates the divergent modes by which information technologies are utilized, as well as the challenges facing libraries in both adopting and using these tools.L’application des médi...

The move towards the digital humanities will see a growing interest in digital tools, such as Ebooks. This study examines the opinions and perception of historians about how Ebooks and other digital tools affect the research process. Findings indicate that historians are concerned that the digital environment reduces the possibility of chance encou...

This paper analyzes naturally occurring descriptions of chance encounters as found in blogs. We develop a model of serendipity that describes facets of the phenomenon and their interconnections, and examine the applicability of this model to accounts of everyday chance encounters.Cet article analyse les occurrences naturelles des descriptions de ha...

This article explores adoption rates of the Ebook amongst Historians at the University of Western Ontario. Employing the first stage of Rogers’ Innovation-Decision Process, the researchers examine the role that social networks play in this process and what effect the Historians’ desire for the possibility of serendipity has on electronic research.C...

The proliferation of portable, networked and location-aware devices has drastically changed how the city is represented and interpreted in general and during specific events in particular by enabling new practices of digital curation and networked audience activities. These extend the urban realm from the physical into the virtual, which provides a...

The privacy paradox describes people's willingness to disclose personal information on social network sites despite expressing high levels of concern. In this study, we employ the distinction between institutional and social privacy to examine this phenomenon. We investigate what strategies undergraduate students have developed, and their motivatio...

This article aims to understand the adoption of e-books by academic historians for the purpose of teaching and research. This includes an investigation into their knowledge about and perceived characteristics of this evolving research tool. The study relied on Rogers's model of the innovation-decision process to guide the development of an intervie...

Social tagging has become a common practice across a variety of platforms on the Web. In this panel, we propose to start with one title, Casino Royale, a James Bond novel by Ian Fleming, and the other cultural products that emanated from it (e.g., two movies, one song, visuals and images, articles and blog posts) to explore social tagging practices...

Most research on social media tends to focus on individual or group-level characteristics, neglecting to consider the influence of relational and cultural variables. To fill this void, we collected social network data in Israel (N = 492) and Canada (N = 293) to investigate the effect of individual, relational, and cultural variables on the frequenc...

The work of academics has radically changed since the introduction of social media tools. One area that has received considerable attention is that of real-time technologies for communication and collaboration. Academics can use tools such as Google Docs, Skype and Dropbox to facilitate the exchange of information, the dissemination of research fin...

In this paper, we propose a new ethnographic method for the study of produsage (Bruns 2008) in social media contexts. The proposed method is based on three lines of thought: Marx's method of 'A Workers' Inquiry', the autonomists' method of co-research, and recent critical theory of Web 2.0. To show the applicability and usefulness of the proposed m...

In this paper, we propose a new ethnographic method for the study of produsage (Bruns 2008) in social media contexts. The proposed method is based on three lines of thought: Marx’s method of ‘A Workers’ Inquiry’, the autonomists’ method of co-research, and recent critical theory of Web 2.0. To show the applicability and usefulness of the proposed m...

Some researchers have suggested that opportunities for serendipitous discovery of information may be limited in the online environment as a result of technological facilitation of information behavior. In response, they suggest building tools that enhance opportunities for serendipity. Based on our model of everyday serendipity, we offer design sug...

Ebooks are being integrated into academic library catalogs---either in addition to existing resources or as a substitute to print copies. This study examines the perceptions and opinions of historians about how Ebooks, and the digitization of cultural artifacts in general, impact the research process of historians. Findings indicate that historians...

We investigate how demands of a task create differing task roles with distinct levels of information uncertainty, information and cognitive load, and social responsibility. Pairs solved a standard matching game using tangrams under three different instant messaging (IM) tool conditions. We show that a participant's use and evaluation of the IM tool...

Academic libraries are increasingly using social media tools to promote services and highlight resources to patrons. This longitudinal study examines the social media adoption rates and practices in academic libraries in the province of Ontario over a fourteen month period beginning in April 2010. Findings indicate that while interest in social med...

Introduction. This paper explores serendipity in the context of everyday life by analyzing naturally occurring accounts of chance encounters in blogs. Method. We constructed forty-four queries related to accidental encounters to retrieve accounts from GoogleBlog. From among the returned results, we selected fifty-six accounts that provided a rich d...

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The move towards the digital humanities will see a growing interest in tools such as Ebooks. This study examines how historians feel Ebooks and other technologies are impacting their research process. Findings indicate that historians feel the digital environment makes chances of a serendipitous encounter with a text unlikely. They continue to try...

Despite their initial slow diffusion in society, Ebooks have recently garnered renewed interest from academics as part of a move toward the digital humanities. To examine how humanists are adopting Ebooks, we focus on the first stage, the Knowledge Phase, of Rogers' model of the diffusion of innovations. Central to this stage is the study of adopte...