The dissertation develops the concept of repurposing as a means for thinking with activists and the issues they confront. It moves alongside pirate television collective insu^tv as they draw on a variety of histories, traditions and technological resources for their practices. Repurposing functions on multiple levels and at multiple scales, from the recycling of materials and spaces to the harnessing and relaying of encounters and events within an ever-expanding field of social relations. When seen as a way of connecting activist groups and communities, the repurposing of media contributes to strengthening an often fragmented and conflicted activist field. Indeed, insu^tv’s use of information and technology brings to the fore the value of media activism for the creation of social assemblages in which the “media” literally mediates between individuals and among individuals and their environment, instituting and developing an ontogenetic relation (Simondon, 1989). Yet, rather than simply making sense of insu^tv’s practices, the concept of repurposing also provokes a discussion regarding the ethics of connection. For insu^tv, this connective ethics can be understood as a set of rules and principles that facilitate the evaluation of actions, communication, and thought according to an immanent mode of collective existence (Deleuze, 1988; Simondon, 1989). For the author, herself a member of insu^tv and an academic researcher, this immanent position helps challenge traditional models of knowing and envisioning social change and instead proposes alternatives that attend to the singularity and relation among new political movements, and to the political potential of research methods that focus on process and fold activism into academia. The methodology is inspired by the militant research methods of the Italian Autonomia movement (conricerca or inchiesta), as developed and performed by activists themselves. While attending to the complexity of social struggles, the concept of repurposing enables an approach to research and experimentation as modes of sociability, where these modes are themselves repurposed through an ethics of connection. This line informs the relation between ethics and subjectivation, as well as between ethics and micropolitics, facilitating the emergence of new modes of political action through the repurposing of the social field itself.

Public library services are evolving in response to the changing informational needs and behaviours of the citizens of the knowledge society. Reference statistics are declining and the move to self-service, virtual reference and an increasing use of mediating information and communication technologies calls into question the ongoing role of human, face-to-face information interaction at the public library’s front-line reference “desk”. An ethnographic case study of face-to-face adult reference service was conducted in a large Canadian urban public library. Over 8 months during 2006, a pilot study was conducted, followed by 170 hours of observations at the reference desks in three branch libraries of varying sizes and semi-structured interviews with front-line reference staff, library managers and reference service clients. 480 reference interactions were documented and policy documents were reviewed. An inductive staged process of analytical abstraction, a narrative approach to the interpretations and a critical reflexivity as participant researcher were employed. The main contribution of this study is the articulation of a practice framework for understanding and studying the reference service within the public library as organization. Sharing knowledge, finding meaning and learning are the outcomes of this epistemic practice. A typology of four reference encounters characterized in three dimensions of interpersonal communication; information exchange and mode of practice is detailed. This study challenges previous interpretations of reference services as a transactional, unitized question-answer activity and depicts it in a larger context as an interactional, relational set of activities that altogether characterize an epistemic practice. The three dimensions of structure (library organization), agency (reference staff and clients) and objects (library collections) anchor this conceptual framework – they are interdependent dimensions interacting to illuminate a robust understanding of face-to-face reference service. This study responds to previous research in which the reference process is studied separately from its social practice and its structural-organizational contexts.

While there are exemplary studies on the relationships between social networks and media such as television and the Internet, less is known about the social network consequences of mobile phone use during life-stage transitions. This study investigates the roles that mobile phones play in supporting the relationships of young people as they transition to and through their first-year of university in Toronto, Canada. Focussing on information practices during a transition that tests the resilience of support networks, this study queried the extent to which mobile phones play a role in keeping relationships intact, enabling students to maintain a sense of social cohesion and belonging. Data were collected from November 2007 to September 2008 through a longitudinal research design. Socio-technical concepts and network analysis techniques were applied to analyze the ways in which mobile communication is embedded in the everyday social life of young people aged 17-34. Set within the culturally-specific context of urban Canada, the data provided substantial evidence that mobile phones foster social cohesion within intimate relations but provide a more tenuous platform from which to nurture new relationships. First-year undergraduates have integrated the mobile phone into the way they engage with their social networks to a considerable degree, with commuter students experiencing additional tensions in negotiating relationships from home and on-campus. Findings showed that mobile phones were the devices of choice to mitigate feelings of loneliness, with deleterious consequences for the development of new relationships. Furthermore, the mobile phone was a key contributor to a rising sense of empowerment and autonomy for young adults as they negotiated identity transformations during their rite of passage into adulthood. Issues of trust and reciprocity in forming new relationships were mediated through a continuum of social media of which the mobile phone was the most intimate. Evidence of continuous access to social networks has broader implications for how mechanisms for coping with being alone and disconnection are acquired in this generation. Finally, observations of ritualistic interaction practices involving mobile phones may be theorized as small-scale evidence of larger societal shifts from collective constructs of community to that of networked individuals.

While linguistic skill is a hallmark of humanity, the increasing volume of linguistic data each of us faces is causing individual and societal problems — ‘information overload’ is a commonly discussed condition. Tasks such as finding the most appropriate information online, understanding the contents of a personal email repository, and translating documents from another language are now commonplace. These tasks need not cause stress and feelings of overload: the human intellectual capacity is not the problem. Rather, the computational interfaces to linguistic data are problematic — there exists a Linguistic Visualization Divide in the current state-of-the-art. Through five design studies, this dissertation combines sophisticated natural language processing algorithms with information visualization techniques grounded in evidence of human visuospatial capabilities. The first design study, Uncertainty Lattices, augments real-time computermediated communication, such as cross-language instant messaging chat and automatic speech recognition. By providing explicit indications of algorithmic confidence, the visualization enables informed decisions about the quality of computational outputs. Two design studies explore the space of content analysis. DocuBurst is an interactive visualization of document content, which spatially organizes words using an expert-created ontology. Broadening from single documents to document collections, Parallel Tag Clouds combine keyword extraction and coordinated visualizations to provide comparative overviews across subsets of a faceted text corpus. Finally, two studies address visualization for natural language processing research. The Bubble Sets visualization draws secondary set relations around arbitrary collections of items, such as a linguistic parse tree. From this design study we propose a theory of spatial rights to consider when assigning visual encodings to data. Expanding considerations of spatial rights, we present a formalism to organize the variety of approaches to coordinated and linked visualization, and introduce VisLink, a new method to relate and explore multiple 2d visualizations in 3d space. Intervisualization connections allow for cross-visualization queries and support high level comparison between visualizations. From the design studies we distill challenges common to visualizing language data, including maintaining legibility, supporting detailed reading, addressing data scale challenges, and managing problems arising from semantic ambiguity.

This doctoral study investigates the nature and role of leisure reading in the lives of avid immigrant readers. Guided by hermeneutic phenomenology and conducted by means of surveys and in-depth interviews, it uses a sample of Russian-speaking immigrants in Toronto, Canada, as a case study. The overarching research problem is divided into three research questions (RQ): RQ1: Who are the readers? RQ2: What are the main characteristics of reading behavior and habits of participants after immigration? RQ3: What role does leisure reading play in participants’ lives in immigration? Answering RQ1, the study paints demographic and socio-cultural portraits of participants; recreates a variety of contexts shaping their reading; and unfolds their reader histories. In response to RQ2, it traces immediate post-immigration fluctuations in reading behavior; records the most peculiar reading contents; explores participants’ self-perceptions as readers; outlines the major areas of post-immigration changes in leisure reading; and presents the analysis of acculturation stress in the area of leisure reading. It is concluded that leisure reading can be a more sensitive indicator of acculturation than more utilitarian measures, because it can open a window to the cultural and psychological intricacies of acculturation. Finally, RQ3 generates a theoretical discussion of the concept of ‘the role of reading’ and determines the study focus on immigration-specific, emotional and instrumental, roles. Leisure reading is found important in coping with the culture shock; sharing the experience of others and assessing personal immigration paths; re-evaluating the history of the fatherland and gaining a new perspective on the national heritage; stabilizing identity; learning about the new country; improving English-language proficiency; and compensating for the deficiencies of a transitional period. In addition, leisure reading emerges as a powerful force cementing ethnic and transnational reading communities. The study expands the selected acculturation models and theories; introduces clarity to the concepts of the role and appeal of reading; highlights the dual and self-reinforcing function of reading as a measure and a determinant of acculturation. Finally, it presents a systematic examination of the ethnic readership that has escaped the attention of reading researchers in the largest immigrant-receiving countries, Canada and the United States.

While credibility perception on the Web is a well-researched topic across multiple disciplines, extant studies have not considered nonvisual modalities of Web access. This research explores how Web users who are blind or visually impaired perceive the credibility of online information and how the screen reader used by them to interact with the Web mediates the process. Credibility perception was studied in the context of the screen reader users’ everyday information practices, examining in depth the effect of Web accessibility on their online information interactions, information practices and credibility perception. Adopting an exploratory approach, a sequential multimethods research design was used. Between April and July 2008 data were collected from adult screen reader users residing in Ontario, Canada through an electronic questionnaire survey (N=60) to identify salient issues, which were then examined deeper through semi-structured interviews with a subsample (N=13) during June 2009. Hands-on online information activities (with participant observation and think-aloud protocol) were also conducted during the interview session. Primary findings emerged through qualitative content analysis of descriptive data, with quantitative results guiding and supplementing the analysis. Online information credibility perception is found to be a dynamic and social process. It is governed by users’ assumptions based on their past experiences, personal knowledge/beliefs and social inputs. Assumptions evolve over time and usage into personal heuristics. The credibility perception process spans three phases—prediction, evaluation and corroboration—permeating the information seeking, using and sharing practices of users. Evaluation of website and web content depends on users’ online interaction proficiency and is bounded by the interface affordances provided by the screen reader and the amount of meta-information provided by the websites for interpreting visual/spatial features. Community support scaffolds users towards more effective technology management and credibility perception. Therefore, promoting inclusion in the online participatory culture will enhance the information practices of screen reader users.

The dissertation develops the concept of repurposing as a means for thinking with activists and the issues they confront. It moves alongside pirate television collective insu^tv as they draw on a variety of histories, traditions and technological resources for their practices. Repurposing functions on multiple levels and at multiple scales, from the recycling of materials and spaces to the harnessing and relaying of encounters and events within an ever-expanding field of social relations. When seen as a way of connecting activist groups and communities, the repurposing of media contributes to strengthening an often fragmented and conflicted activist field. Indeed, insu^tv’s use of information and technology brings to the fore the value of media activism for the creation of social assemblages in which the “media” literally mediates between individuals and among individuals and their environment, instituting and developing an ontogenetic relation (Simondon, 1989). Yet, rather than simply making sense of insu^tv’s practices, the concept of repurposing also provokes a discussion regarding the ethics of connection. For insu^tv, this connective ethics can be understood as a set of rules and principles that facilitate the evaluation of actions, communication, and thought according to an immanent mode of collective existence (Deleuze, 1988; Simondon, 1989). For the author, herself a member of insu^tv and an academic researcher, this immanent position helps challenge traditional models of knowing and envisioning social change and instead proposes alternatives that attend to the singularity and relation among new political movements, and to the political potential of research methods that focus on process and fold activism into academia. The methodology is inspired by the militant research methods of the Italian Autonomia movement (conricerca or inchiesta), as developed and performed by activists themselves. While attending to the complexity of social struggles, the concept of repurposing enables an approach to research and experimentation as modes of sociability, where these modes are themselves repurposed through an ethics of connection. This line informs the relation between ethics and subjectivation, as well as between ethics and micropolitics, facilitating the emergence of new modes of political action through the repurposing of the social field itself.

Online support groups have shown a strong potential to foster resourceful environments for people living with depression without restrictions of time, space, and stigma. Research has found that users of those groups exchange various types of support. However, due to the scarcity of research, many other aspects of depression online support groups remain inconclusive. In particular, how the support exchange contributes to the everyday lives of users living with depression remains unclear. To contribute to filing some of the knowledge gaps, the present study explored what kinds of support were requested and provided in a depression online support group. By doing so, this study aimed to examine the roles of the depression online support group in the management of depression. Mixed methods were employed with a concurrent triangulation strategy. A sample of 980 posts were selected systematically from the support group. Demographic and clinical information of the users who made those posts were recorded. Quantitative and qualitative content analyses were conducted to examine the types of support being exchanged through those posts. Inter-coder reliability was calculated to ensure the consistency of the coding process. The results indicate that users sought informational support, various types of emotional support and coaching support, and social companionship. Users not only sought listening ears, but also practical advice to cope with the situations they were going through. The group appeared to serve its users as a place to meet others with similar experience; to manage loneliness; to discuss what they could not discuss elsewhere; to "just vent"; to gain advice from multiple perspectives on an issue that had been magnifying the impact of depression; to share the experience with formal care provision systems; to express immediate support needs; to share useful discoveries, accomplishments, and creative ways to manage depression; and to experience the value of helping others. This study supports the idea that depression online support groups have the strong potential to contribute to the everyday lives of people living with depression in a way that is not available elsewhere and in a way that complement to the overall framework of existing care provision systems.

Personal archives are those created by individuals for their own individual needs and purposes. As a category of archive, personal archives are under-studied and under-represented in the archival literature. This dissertation seeks to fill some of the gaps identified by archival theorists by investigating the nature of personal archives and the application of foundational principles of archival theory to them. Focusing on the archives of a particular sub-set of creators, literary authors, I question both recent and persistent trends toward a psychological or character-based approach to personal archives, and call attention to the limitations of past and current interpretations of the principle of provenance (and its sub-principles, the principle of respect for original order and the principle of respect des fonds) as it is understood in relation and applied to writers’ archives. I argue that archival theory is too strongly oriented toward the creator of archives as referent rather than to the archive itself as referent, and propose the need for a stronger focus, both in theory and in practice, on the various individuals and processes that shape an archive. Finally, I call for more candid descriptive practices that better convey to researchers the complicated life histories of the archives they consult and that admit the degree to which archives are the self-conscious constructs of a variety of archival agents.

In this thesis, it is argued that Canadian film documentarian and inventor Roman Kroitor’s lifework is structured by simultaneous appeals to the realist and reflexive capacities of film and animation. It is shown that the diverse periods in Kroitor’s lifework (including documentary film production at the National Film Board of Canada; co-invention and development of the large-format film apparatus, IMAX; and software design for computer animation in stereoscopic 3D) are united by a general interest in facilitating immersive audience experiences with documentary information and evidentiary entertainment. Against those who have conceptualized cinema as functioning like a frame or a window, this thesis analyzes Kroitor’s diverse work in relation to Gene Youngblood’s conception of “expanded cinema” (1970). It is argued that Kroitor’s efforts in film and invention constitute modalities that actively eschew the architectonic limits that typically characterize the cinematic experience.