Supporting workplace information needs of people with dementia

Dementia, a broad term for a range of brain diseases that are generally characterised by memory loss, aphasia, decreased social inhibition, and other symptoms, has no cure and is not a normal part of ageing. It is, however, an international epidemic. Approximately 47.5 million people worldwide have dementia. These numbers are only expected to increase, and dementia care has therefore become an international public health priority (World Health Organisation, 2015). The changes that occur in the brains of people with dementia decrease their ability to make sense of information, a process which requires the utilisation of individual cognitive processes as well as the involvement of social and cultural contexts (Sabb & Riss, 2011). Information needs change throughout the course of the disease as well. For example, people either at risk for dementia or in the early stages of it might wish to consider whether they want to give consent to advance research directives in preparation for when the disease progresses (Pierce, 2010), a decision that requires information about their prognosis as well as the research that might be undertaken

Analysing found non-text social media data : options and challenges

This paper is based on a chapter entitled "Coding of non-text data" (Rasmussen Pennington, in press) that has been accepted for publication in The SAGE handbook of social media research methods. The chapter outlines the special concerns associated with collecting and analyzing data found on social media sites and not in language-based text (Rasmussen Neal, 2012). The presence of non-text information on social media sites, such as photographs, videos, music, and even games on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, Pinterest, Snapchat, YouTube, and Vine, continues to grow exponentially. Despite their abundant presence, and the wealth of insight that social media researchers could obtain from them, few methods have been developed and utilized to use them. They are naturalistic, "found" data sources, just as tweets and blog posts are, but they are frequently ignored in favour of text-based data. The purpose of this paper will not present original empirical results; instead, it is meant to introduce social media researchers to potentially new data sources as well as methods for analysing them. Results from the author's previous studies in this area will be used as examples

Developing a mixed methods approach to analysing interactions on Facebook

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New formats, new information environments, new methodologies : the virtual unknown

The ubiquitous availability of virtual information has changed how people seek and use it. The increasing existence of smartphones, tablets, and wearable devices has made virtual information environments available almost everywhere. Initial Internet environments were largely textual. Increasingly, however, with the advent of social media and the increased ability of users to create and share information, the landscape changed (O’Reilly, 2005) as the virtual world experienced a dramatic increase in non-textual objects. These include photographs, videos, music, video games, maps, and data visualisations (Rasmussen Neal, 2012). Online environments incorporate a range of textual and non-textual elements that work together to create a complementary new form of “document” (Neal, 2010). These artefacts present rich opportunities for studies of information seeking and use. Using a social science lens, information scientists can learn about people’s information needs through the items they share and discuss (Banks and Zeitlyn, 2015). For example, analysing the hashtags used to describe non-textual cultural products in different forms could help information scientists understand the terms people naturally use when searching for them (Rasmussen Neal, 2012; Desrochers et al., 2016). Performing qualitative analysis on user-created videos can provide insight into the communities and the information practices that form around topics (Werner, 2012; Rasmussen Pennington, 2016). Social network analyses can help researchers understand how information sharing takes place around communities’ photographs (Stvilia and Jörgensen, 2009; Thelwall and Buckley, 2013). As noted in Rasmussen Pennington (2017), the potential for utilising non-textual data in virtual environments offers opportunities and challenges. Most information science research has been rooted in the assumption that a “document” is text-based (Buckland, 1997); therefore, the discipline is not entirely prepared methodologically for including non-textual data (Wyatt and O’Connor, 2004; Rasmussen Pennington, 2017). Additionally, the traditional conceptualisation of information is a strictly defined notion: it is text to be searched and retrieved. Alternatively, Bates (2006) advocated for a broader definition: “the pattern of organization of matter and energy” (Parker, 1974, p. 10). Today’s virtual environments afford a plethora of information types, which calls for investigation into how people interact with non-textual documents as well as the text that accompanies them

Coding of non-text data

This chapter overviews the domain of “non-text” data that can be found on social media, such as videos and photographs. It then outlines research methods that can be applied to analysing and coding these non-text documents and their associated texts. These methods include content analysis, document analysis, compositional interpretation, musical analysis, cultural studies, visual sociology, visual anthropology, semiotic analysis, iconography/iconology, discourse analysis, visual social semiotics, and multimodal research. The chapter concludes with a call for future development of methods to continue advancing research in this emerging and essential area of social science

Youth e-mental health in Scotland : challenges and opportunities

One in ten UK youth have mental health issues (Watson & Douglas, 2012), and girls may be at higher risk than boys (Levin, Currie, & Muldoon, 2009). Predictors of mental health issues and emotional distress have been identified in area youth, such as material deprivation, lack of emotional support from parents, family issues, and lower education (Bjarnason & Sigurdardottir, 2003; Sweeting, West, Young, & Der, 2010). The UK has prioritised mental health reform (Department of Health, 2014). National resources such as See Me, a site devoted to decreasing mental health stigma (https://www.seemescotland.org/young-people/) and ChildLine, a phone and online help line for youth (http://www.childline.org.uk), are making noteworthy attempts at connecting young people in the UK with engaging and useful mental health information. Much work remains to be done in order to connect youth with the mental health resources and information they need. The author’s prior research has demonstrated that differences exist between what young people search for, find, and prefer to interact with online, and sources that clinicians would consider authoritative sources. She has also found that low levels of information literacy and health literacy, unengaging information presentation such as dense text, and a mismatch between lay language and clinical language decreases the chances that youth will find the mental health information they need (Neal, Campbell, Williams, Lu, & Nussbaumer, 2011; Rasmussen Pennington, Richardson, Garinger, & Contursi, 2013). This paper will provide an overview of the author’s past work in this area. It will also present her plans for future research into the online mental health information needs and information seeking behaviours of Scottish youth ages 16-25

Student wellbeing : Managing your PhD journey

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Searching for the right feelings : emotional metadata in music

This paper will move beyond the bounds of bibliographic description and to discuss research about emotions shared by music fans online and how they might be used as metadata for new approaches to search and retrieval

Youth mental health and information engagement

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"Lookin' for a sound that's gonna drown out the world" : resolving musical emotional ambiguity in U2's POPVision

Semantic ambiguity complicates finding desired information. Additionally, the same music elicits different emotions in different people, which makes it difficult to find music online that meets our emotional desires. I operationalise this as “musical emotional ambiguity.” U2’s musical emotional ambiguity is especially complex, as any fan can attest. In this presentation, I will disambiguate the emotion of U2’s PopVision using multimodal analysis of music, lyrics, videos, and live concerts from Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Pop, 1990s world events, interviews, reviews, paraphernalia, and fandom discussions. Can we agree on how PopVision and its artefacts make us feel