Saturday, 23 January 2016

A quick hello & then some research interests

Hi, I'm Jelena!

I'm in my last semester of the LIS stream of the MI program and the Book History and Print Culture collaborative program.

This assignment came at the perfect time because I have to start putting together a research proposal very soon!


My current research interests are centred on scholarly communications and participatory media. Generally, I have been interested in how social scholarship is developing in various disciplines. Some of the particular questions that I hope to explore are:

  • How are scholars using participatory media (such as Twitter, blogging, Reddit, etc.) to engage in scholarly discourse?
  • What are the effects of participatory media and open access on how information reaches people outside of particular disciplines?
     
  • How does our daily engagement through participatory media affect our engagement with scholarship? What are the consequences of these trends on the importance placed on authority and expertise?

Beyond these questions, I hope to look at the role of libraries in this realm. Since instruction and education are a big part of academic librarianship, I hope to determine how libraries could help both scholars and students understand the current nature of this form of discourse. 

The overarching theme in these questions is performative side of participatory media. All of the various platforms are designed with particular features that enable certain forms of conversation. What is the significance of these differences when it comes to scholarly communication and how can we teach future academics and students about social scholarship in a thoughtful way? 

There are obviously too many questions for one research project here, but these are some of the issues that I have been thinking about in trying to conceptualize my project.


One good article that explores the social space of social media is: "The Rules of Twitter" by Dorothy Kim, published in Digital Pedagogy



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