Research Day 2017 – Information, Social Media, and Well-Being

We are pleased to announce that the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, the iSchool at UBC, will hold its 7th Annual Research Day on Friday, March 10th, 2017, in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, Golden Jubilee Room. Research Day showcases the contributions of the iSchool students and faculty working at the intersections of archival, information, library and children’s literature studies.

Questions about social media as sources of information about individuals (of different ages, genders, backgrounds) and communities, their uses in our personal and professional lives, and impact on our practices and overall well-being are central to the work of students and scholars across all our iSchool programs. Recognizing this common ground, this year’s Research Day will focus on the broad topic of “information, social media, and well-being,” considering the many connections social media now have with the way we do information, library, and archival studies.


Event Details

Date: March 10, 2017

Where: The Golden Jubilee Room (4th floor, Irving K. Barber Learning Centre)


We are also very pleased to have Lyle Ungar as our new keynote speaker. Dr. Lyle Ungar is a Professor of Computer and Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also holds appointments in multiple departments in the Schools of Business, Medicine, Arts and Sciences, and Engineering and Applied Science.  Lyle received a B.S. from Stanford University and a Ph.D. from M.I.T.  He has published over 200 articles, supervised two dozen PhD students, and is co-inventor on eleven patents. His current research focuses on developing scalable machine learning methods for data mining and text mining, including spectral methods for NLP, and analysis of social media to better understand the drivers of physical and mental well-being.

We are looking forward to having Lyle Ungar join us for Research Day. Below the details of Lyle’s talk

Keynote: 11.00 am -12.00 pm

Speaker: Lyle Ungar, Professor of Computer And Information Science, University of Pennsylvania

“Measuring Well-Being Using Social Media”

Social media such as Twitter and Facebook provide a rich, if imperfect portal onto people’s lives.  We analyze tens of millions of Facebook posts and billions of tweets to study variation in language use with age, gender, personality, and mental and physical well-being.  Word clouds visually illustrate the big five personality traits (e.g., “What is it like to be neurotic?”), while correlations between language use and county level health data suggest connections between health and happiness, including potential psychological causes of heart disease


We look forward to welcoming you for a day of engaging and inspiring short talks, conversations, and poster presentations. You can RSVP to this free event here and the Research Day schedule can be found on the iSchool website.

Questions about Research Day can be directed to: ischool.researchday@ubc.ca

Dr. Muhammad Abdul-Mageed

Dr. Jennifer Douglas

Dr. Luciana Duranti

Dr. Deborah Hicks

Ph.D. Students: Saguna Shankar & Michelle Kaczmarek

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