Skip to content

It is my pleasure, as the Awards Coordinator for the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Special Interest Group for Social Informatics (SIG SI), to be able to announce the winners of our 2020 ASIS&T SIG SI Awards.

The first award to announce is our Social Informatics Best Paper Award. Out of eight nominated papers, relevant papers received two reviews from social informatics scholars, with those reviews then evaluated by our Best Paper Award jury of Rachel Simons (SIG SI Chair), Kolina Koltai (SIG SI Co-Chair-Elect), and Adam Worrall (SIG SI Awards Coordinator). Reviewers and the jury evaluated papers on their relevance to social informatics; the clarity of their methods, findings, and implications; their significance and contribution to social informatics research; and their overall strength as deserving of the Best Paper Award.

The award jury chose one winning paper whose authors will receive the $750 (US) prize: Irene V. Pasquetto (Harvard University), Christine L. Borgman(University of California Los Angeles), and Morgan F. Wofford (University of California Los Angeles / University of Michigan), for their paper “Uses and reuses of scientific data: The data creators’ advantage,” published during 2019 in Harvard Data Science Review, volume 1 issue 2. http://doi.org/10.1162/99608f92.fc14bf2d

Given the high quality of nominated papers, we also wish to recognize two honourable mentions:

  • Carsten Østerlund and Kevin Crowston (both of Syracuse University), for their paper “Documentation and access to knowledge in online communities: Know your audience and write appropriately?“, published during 2019 in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, volume 70 issue 6, pp. 619-633. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24152
  • Kyle M. L. Jones (Indiana University, Indianapolis [IUPUI]), Alan Rubel (University of Wisconsin, Madison), and Ellen LeClere (University of Wisconsin, Madison), for their paper “A matter of trust: Higher education institutions as information fiduciaries in an age of educational data mining and learning analytics,” in press and available in early view since 2019 at the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24327

The second and third awards we wish to announce are our inaugural Emerging Social Informatics Researcher Awards. Four students self-nominated for these awards, with their applications adjudicated by myself (as SIG SI Awards Coordinator) and SIG SI Co-Chair-Elect Colin Rhinesmith. We assessed the relevance of the student’s current and future research to social informatics, along with their submitted or accepted contributions to the ASIS&T 2020 Annual Meeting and our own Social Informatics Research Symposium. Two winners are being recognized as emerging researchers in social informatics, who each receive free / reimbursed registration for ASIS&T 2020 and the Social Informatics Research Symposium, where they will be able to network and interact with other social informatics researchers. They are:

Diana Floegel, a PhD student at Rutgers University. Diana will be presenting their co-authored paper with Kaitlin Costello (also of Rutgers University) titled “‘Predictive ads are not doctors’: Mental health tracking and technology companies” on the morning of October 29th as part of ASIS&T 2020. Their research was self-described as looking at how ” marginalized actors … express agency within sociotechnical assemblages that are structurally inequitable, and therefore oppressive” with an aim to improving equity and building “substantive sociotechnical theory.”

Joseph Winberry

Joseph Winberry, a PhD student at the University of Tennessee. Joseph will present his first-authored poster with Bharat Mehra (of the University of Alabama) titled “US state libraries as strong institutions: Supporting justice for LGBTQ+ patrons?” as part of the ASIS&T 2020 poster session. He described his research as focused in community informatics, and in particular on “how stakeholders from marginalized populations can utilize information and communications technology (ICTs) to better engage with community-embedded institutions.”

All award winners will be recognized during the 2020 Social Informatics Research Symposium, co-organized by SIG SI, SIG SM (Social Media), and SIG IEP (Information Ethics & Policy), to be held online on Saturday, October 31st and Sunday November 1st, as part of the ASIS&T 2020 Annual Meeting. A reminder that early registration for the ASIS&T Annual Meeting ends today, Friday August 7th. For more details on and to register for the Annual Meeting and Social Informatics Research Symposium, please go to https://www.asist.org/am20/.

Thanks to those who reviewed nominated papers for our Best Paper Award this year: Catherine Dumas, Melissa Bica, Kristin Eschenfelder, Pnina Fichman, Noriko Hara, Caroline Haythornthwaite, Kolina Koltai, Eric Meyer, Colin Rhinesmith, Ana Roeschley, Howard Rosenbaum, Kalpana Shankar, Sarika Sharma, and Rachel Simons. And congratulations again to Irene, Christine, Morgan, Diana, and Joseph for their existing and emerging contributions to social informatics. We hope to see everyone (virtually!) for our 2020 Social Informatics Research Symposium and the ASIS&T Annual Meeting!


Adam Worrall, Ph.D.
Awards Coordinator, ASIS&T SIG SI
Assistant Professor, University of Alberta