Hot Topics: Smouldering Scholarship in FIMS

Media studies, journalism, library & information science and health information science are awash in polarizing topics. Issues such as the rapid growth of generative AI, the spread of misinformation, and ever-increasing instances of censorship have led to hostility, mistrust, and exhaustion, both within our fields and in the world writ large. These matters reflect a range of cultural, social, and technological challenges that require interrogation.

FIMS faculty and grad students will present on subjects we designate as ‘hot topics:’ the simmering, smouldering, or downright scorching issues we face at the intersection of media studies, library and information science, and health information science. This conference will provide a window into work that aims to address, redress, or reshape the landscape of our information environments.

For view the full schedule and to register, visit the Hot Topics website.

Conference Highlights

Morning Keynote - "Hot Takes: the Purpose of Research in a Melting World"
Presented by Assistant Professor Bri Watson

Oftentimes, the purpose of graduate and doctoral education is to train and -- more importantly -- evaluate us as researchers. The design of these programs trains us to think of research as an individual pursuit: our question, our data, our contribution. This training and the model it is based on quietly licenses a model of extraction where we go into communities, take what we need, and leave with a publication. While this talk argues that ethical scholarship demands more, it also aims to move beyond simple challenges to the default frameworks of academia and argue that the consequences of late-stage capitalism (global warming, the rise of fascism, and the atomization of personhood) orginates from the individual itself and that research which seeks genuine conversation with and accountability to its communities is more capable of producing meaningful and transformative knowledge.

Afternoon Keynote - "In the Age of AI, Why On-the-Ground Reporting Still Matters"
Presented by Angela Murphy, Foreign Editor at The Globe and Mail and current FIMS Asper Fellow

Artificial intelligence will be an important tool for journalists. However, it cannot replace the reporter on the scene, or the citizen journalist, bearing witness to an event and collecting human accounts. The growing dissemination of false images makes the verified eye-witness story or photograph more vital than ever. Angela Murphy, the Foreign Editor for The Globe and Mail, will discuss the on-the-ground reporting that has made a difference in how we see our world.

Scheduled Panel Themes

Panel A: Spectacles of control, power, and autonomy
Panel B: Navigating access, control, and archiving
Panel C: Thinking through the foundations: Ontology, and politics of information
Panel D: Information under siege
Panel E: Understanding health information in the context of New Media
Panel F: Resistance in and outside of constrained systems

Panel descriptions can be found on the Hot Topics website.