In 2018, it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica had profiled 80 million Facebook users and arguably used these profiles to influence their political decision-making in the US presidential elections and the Brexit vote. While Facebook’s data practices and the potential for influencing targeted users became as a surprise for many, critical studies of social media have highlighted for almost a decade now that social media sites are not neutral playgrounds for its users. Rather, social media sites are designed for the purposes of influencing users, monetizing their connections, and providing value for the owners of the site. To elaborate the complexity of our social media relations, the course draws on different phenomenological and material approaches of media theory. In specific, the course brings together some of the core themes of contemporary social media studies focusing on recent books that introduce critical approaches. Critical in this context does not mean positioning social media as something negative but rather it is an approach that investigates social media through its continuities and breaks, challenges corporate definitions of social media bringing the world closer together, and provides tools to analyze the logics according to which social media sites function and individuals are positioned as user subjectivities.

This course examines the socio-cultural, political, policy and commercial aspects of privacy and information and communication technology in the Canadian and global context. The interdisciplinary course will explore topics including: privacy theory (histories of privacy and technology, various dimensions of privacy, evolving conceptions of reasonable expectations of privacy); regulation (the role of data protection authorities, privacy organizations and civil society, privacy legislation, select case law); challenges to individual and collective privacy rights with intense datafication; and digital privacy policy literacy.

Data science is a fast-growing field and new tools and techniques are designed everyday to perform data analysis in quick and robust ways. This course covers the fundamentals of data science using the R language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. R is currently widely used by information students and data scientists from various disciplines. The course will teach students how to do data science in an easy way. It is designed for students from the social sciences and from non-programming backgrounds. We will learn skills of data collection, storage, cleaning, transformation, visualization, and various techniques of data analysis. We will apply those techniques to analyze structured tabular data and unstructured text data through experimenting on real datasets, including online data. This course will provide students with a new skill highly in demand in the information and data sciences job markets.

This course explores the social consequences of mixed reality applications, and prepares students with user experience design techniques to prototype, evaluate and critique mixed reality applications. The course focuses on core mixed reality mechanics, including tablet, head-mounted and projected augmented reality, embodied interaction techniques, and provides students with an understanding of the design implications of these approaches for mixed reality UX. Students will explore prototyping methods for designing mixed reality applications, and study evaluation techniques for these applications. The course will take a critical perspective on mixed reality applications, particularly their potential impact on social practices, culture, and society.

The purpose and content of this course is to provide an introduction to the world of audiovisual documents (photographs, sound recordings, moving images). This includes their history, physical makeup, stages of creation, appraisal, acquisition, arrangement and description and preservation. As well there will be a brief introduction to copyright as well as the licensing and distribution ramifications of using, exhibiting, and re-purposing AV documents. By focusing on the above knowledge set, the course will reveal how important they are in research terms both as an adjunct to other types of documents and in their own right. This exposure will make it evident that audiovisual documents deserve to be given the fullest consideration in archival and library management decision-making, as much as any other types of documents.

Art and design research has been revitalized by the revisionist impulse of visual culture analysis, which seeks to embed creativity within sociological and historical contexts. In response, art librarians must empower users to explore inter-disciplinary search tools that explore traditional aesthetic literature in relation to cultural studies.

Service science is a new, interdisciplinary field that combines social science, business, and engineering knowledge needed for individuals and organizations (private, public, or nonprofit) to succeed in the shift to the service and information-based economy.

This course will introduce students to the foundations of evaluation, including using the logic model, program evaluation, data gathering, analysis and reporting. Examples of evaluation in a variety of information environments will be explored, including libraries, archives and museums as well as how evaluation is applied and practiced in information systems and design and user experience design. This course will provide students with a new skill highly in demand in the information and data sciences job markets.

This course can be used to fulfil the "Managerial" Professional Requirement

From mobile apps to algorithms and robots, digital technologies are crucial factors in the evolution of contemporary work. In this course we analyse their broad impact and significance across many industries, from creative labour and academic work to the platform economy and manufacturing. The course is based on labour theory, feminist political economy, as well as grassroots and Autonomist approaches to work. We also watch and read relevant fiction. The main goal is to sharpen critical tools to analyse the material and ideological configurations of work in the social factory of digital capitalism.

This course can be used to fulfil the "Critical Perspectives" Professional Requirement.

Remix encapsulates the confluence of critical thinking and creativity in cultural production in particular and in creative endeavors more generally. This course enables students to examine the place of remix in contemporary society against the backdrop of legal constraints, moral and cultural challenges, political and economic vested interests, and the rise of participatory culture and remix as socially embedded behaviour. Remix practices involve finding inspiration in what has already been created and then deconstructing, transforming, contrasting, re-using, reconstituting and combining media to produce novel creative outputs that deliver new value. It happens both in physical and virtual environments. The practice is endemic in contemporary culture. We see it now in many forms of art from assemblages to video art, in data construction, in film and video, animation, games, genetic engineering, food, and many other aspects of our culture. Remix is not a new behaviour, it has a long history— for many its ubiquitousness in music production (e.g., hip hop) beginning in the 1980s was a key awareness point, but we have long seen its presence in architecture (e.g., spolia), art (e.g., cubism, collage, “readymades”), film, literature, and music. It has become a cornerstone of our participatory culture and a core information practice. What is different is that the virtual has made the processes of production more accessible to a broader audience and made it possible to distribute the results of remix activities effortlessly. At the same time content which appears to many as source material to inspire collective creativity is subject to vigorous efforts to lock it down as intellectual property. There are many perspectives, for instance, remix practices juxtaposes piracy against these restrictive practices. Remix raises questions about intellectual property rights (IPR), authorship, the collective, what creativity is and where its boundaries lie, what is novel, innovative and original, and the very nature of the producer-consumer. We will view remix through multiple lens some historical, some social, some political and others economic. Remix lies at the juncture of People-Content-Technology and this course investigates remix from the vantage of the field of Information and sets remix within the context of digital culture more generally.

Digital Culture introduces students to shared cultural forms online, including community formation, self-presentation, communication and language, and rituals and celebration. The course draws on a range of socio-cultural approaches to the study of digital culture, such as postcolonialism, critical race theory, queer and feminist theory, actor-network theory, cultural materialism, media archaeology, political economy, structuralism, and post-structuralism. The course will also consider the plurality of what “digital culture” can mean, including digital cultures outside of North America, particularly in the Global South, and the relationships between online and offline worlds. Students will gain a nuanced understanding of the historical landscape that led to the emergence of digital culture within the Internet age, with a particular emphasis on the experiences and contributions of marginalized communities. Integrating theoretical perspectives and relevant methodologies, this course will equip students with a toolkit for studying and interpreting digital culture in a changing world.

Entrepreneurship is key to economic growth and the development and launch of new products and services is one of the most important means of creating new jobs, building wealth, and effecting social change. This course focuses on a specific type of entrepreneurship where resources are very limited, almost nonexistent and innovators begin with an idea they are passionate about.

The course focuses on identifying and understanding what is “informational” in any setting. Students will develop sharpened vision to discern informational patterns, that is, an ability to trace what Bates (1999) calls the “red thread” of information pervading life. To this end, the course involves a fusion of information theory and ethnographic method that is then applied by each student to an independent Research Project. Theories, models, and concepts will be introduced from the literature of Information Seeking and Use (ISU). Students will learn the fundamentals of ethnographic research. Featured Contexts will be profiled and considered as exemplar information experiences in context. As the semester unfolds, students will refine their observational and analytical skills through an exploratory, ethnographic Research Project about the information experience within a context of personal interest or career relevance.

This course considers the history and possible futures of books in a digital world. In this course “the book” is interpreted broadly, meaning not just an object with covers and pages, but also an evolving metaphor for conceptual frameworks for knowledge, and a metonym that brings together many different technologies, institutions, and cultural practices. The course introduces students to interdisciplinary approaches such as book history, textual studies, history of reading, and digital humanities, with an emphasis on balancing theoretical speculation with practical implementation. Readings will survey topics such as the ontology of born-digital artifacts, critical assessment of digitization projects, collaborative knowledge work, reading devices (old and new), e-book interface design, text/image/multimedia relationships, theories and practices of markup, the gendering of technologies, the politics of digital archiving, the materiality of texts, and the epistemology of digital tools. Students will also receive a practical introduction to XML markup and visualization tools.

Information behaviour is the currently preferred term used to describe the many ways in which human beings interact with information, in particular the ways in which people seek and utilize information (Bates, 2010). An understanding of information behaviour is central to work in the information professions and knowledge-based industries. For more than 75 years information behaviour research has been conducted in the field of library and information studies.

Not offered for the upcoming academic year

Not offered for the upcoming academic year

Data Governance is about formally managing critical data throughout the organization and making sure organizations derive value from it. Data Governance is a critical component for organizations leveraging data science and analytics to provide data-driven insights to their clients and consumers. Successful Data Governance is achieved by addressing the 4 v’s to ensure that the volume, variety, velocity, and veracity of data brings the most value. It is generally achieved by a combination of people, process and technology. An effective Data Governance function of an organization begins with focusing on the information most valuable to the organization and the structure that must be put in place to safeguard its integrity, security, quality, integration, meta-data, architecture and lifecycle while building the right infrastructure to support it.

Not offered for the upcoming academic year

Not offered for the upcoming academic year

Not offered for the upcoming academic year

Not offered for the upcoming academic year

Not offered for the upcoming academic year

Not offered for the upcoming academic year

Not offered for the upcoming academic year

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the wide range of research within the field of Information being carried out within the Faculty. The course is organized around a series of talks that include faculty members speaking about common research interests, often from different disciplinary perspectives. These talks provide students with an overview of the diversity of scholarship in the faculty, including the multiple disciplines and subfields in which we operate. Students’ individual understandings and interests are at the center of the course pedagogy. As such, the course will be heavily discussion and event-based. The main objective of this course is to assist students in understanding the overall shape of the field of Information and to begin to discover their own personal place within it.

A systematic introduction to and analysis of the conceptual frameworks and methods (analytic, empirical, evaluative, etc.) employed in information research. Approaches to be considered to be selected from among: (i) discursive (cultural studies, literary theory, continental philosophy; (ii) science and engineering (computer science, HCI); (iii) conceptual (philosophy, mathematical); (iv) qualitative (social science), and (v) quantitative (social science).

Independent reading by student supplemented by regularly scheduled one-on-one meetings with advisor, the details of which will be spelled out in a contract jointly prepared by the student and advisor.

Historical and theoretical perspectives on technological change and its social implications provide a foundation for intensive study and critical analysis of new communication technologies. A grasp of the social, political and economic contexts in which technologies emerge allows the student to discern the way culture both shapes and is shaped by information and communication technologies. Course topics are thus chosen to broadly acquaint students with key historical moments in the history of technology and in the historical situatededness of academic knowledge production regarding media and technology. They provide a framework in which early theorizations of media and technology are studied to enrich current understanding of media. The course also provides grounding in a range of theorizations to give the student a broad overview of the multiplicity of approaches and methods that can aid investigations of technological change in social contexts. This graduate seminar explores the history of “new” media as agents of change in cultural, social, and spatial infrastructures, economies, and cultural politics.

This course investigates how power manifests unevenly across different media, technologies and in different cultural contexts. We will examine structural forces shaping the use and contestation of technologies and media, and critically investigate how technologies and media are used to constitute and organize social and power relations, both historically and in the contemporary context. Through considerations of race, class, gender, and sexuality, the course addresses how media and technology are implicated in social inequality, oppression and exploitation, and how these relations are contested and opposed. The aim of the course is to deepen our critical engagement with the processes, practices, and social relations of media and technology in contemporary political, economic, and social life.