This study compares how China, the European Union and the United States govern AI-driven misinformation through laws, regulations, executive actions, and policy documents. These jurisdictions were selected because they are influential in global AI governance and represent different institutional approaches to information regulation. We adopted a sociotechnical framework for misinformation policy analysis, coding selected instruments across six dimensions: contexts, agents, issues, intermediaries, targets, and actions. The analysis examines how each jurisdiction defines the problem, assigns responsibility, identifies targets, and selects policy instruments. We find that the three jurisdictions govern under different logics. In China, misinformation regulation is incorporated into a broader framework of centralized social order governance. In the EU, it is framed as a systemic risk to fundamental rights and democratic institutions, and accountability is distributed across the AI supply chain. In the U.S., governance is sparse, selective, and harm-based, with enforceability being traded off against coverage. We further suggest that these disparate logics hold even though there is an apparent convergence on labeling, provenance, and transparency requirements.

To address the Annual Meeting theme, “Difficult Conversations: The Role of Information Science in the Age of Human‐Centered Artificial Intelligence,” this panel explores and demonstrates approaches to teaching generative artificial intelligence in and beyond the classroom. The panelists speak from diverse specializations, locations, and perspectives, bringing a wealth of experience. This session will conceptualize Gen AI literacy; consider its role in curricula interdisciplinarity, social, political, and ethical implications; and present pedagogical examples. Following the presentations, we will conclude with an interactive discussion on how to redesign and potentially rebrand curricula from lesson plans to whole programs.

The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) has sparked growing concern over its potential to replace human workers across various industries. While fears of job displacement is valid, AI presents a dual‐edged sword: it not only threatens traditional forms of work but also opens up new opportunities for human liberation—understood here as freeing individuals from repetitive, monotonous tasks and enabling them to focus on more creative, fulfilling, and human‐centric work. This shift presents an opportunity to reconsider and redefine the value of human existence in the context of advanced technology. This panel brings together experts to explore how AI might evolve from a tool of displacement into one of liberation, and how we might reconstruct the value of human existence beyond work. The discussion draws on interdisciplinary perspectives and is developed in dialogue with academic communities such as ASIS&T, aiming to balance AI's potential with the preservation of human creativity, identity, and dignity—ensuring that AI advancements foster human empowerment and contribute positively to the societal fabric.

ABSTRACTThe rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) introduces a notable tension in the realm of traditional, human‐centric information practices, where human subjectivity has been pivotal in both influencing and being influenced by our interactions with information. An excessive reliance on AI distances humans from practices, potentially diminishing human subjectivity. Additionally, as AI takes on roles once exclusively human, it might constrict opportunities for personal growth and the cultivation of unique insights. Moreover, this technological dependency could dilute the richness of direct human interactions, weakening the fabric of social bonds. These issues—increased AI dependence, AI's encroachment on human roles, and the degradation of social ties—underscore the urgent necessity to revisit our interaction with technology, ensuring it serves to enrich rather than undermine the human experience. In light of this, our panel gathers experts to explore strategies for preserving human subjectivity through cognitive autonomy, creative agency, and social connectivity in the age of AI‐driven information practices. Our dialogue also aims to develop a comprehensive AI governance framework, scrutinized from an interdisciplinary perspective, continually refined in collaboration with academic communities, such as ASIS&T, to solidify and enhance our approaches.

The role of public libraries is evolving with the Smart City (SC) trend, but the impact of SC policies on libraries remains under-evaluated. Using the Chinese SC program as a testbed, we applied the Difference-in-Differences (DID) method to assess these policies' effects on infrastructure and services. Results show SC policies enhanced physical collections but negatively impacted space and seating, with no significant effect on services. We discuss the complexity underlying the interplay between digitization and public libraries' roles in the SC context, suggesting a need for further research and policy consideration.

ABSTRACTChatGPT has shown promise in assisting qualitative researchers with coding. Previous efforts have primarily focused on datasets derived from interviews and observations, leaving document analysis, another crucial data source, relatively unexplored. In this project, we address the rapidly emerging topic of disinformation regulatory policy as a pilot to investigate ChatGPT's potential for document analysis. We adapt our existing qualitative research framework, which identifies five key components of disinformation policy: context, actors, issue, instrument, and channel, to sketch out policy documents. We then designed a two‐stage experiment employing a multi‐layer workflow using a dataset with highly relevant policy documents from US federal government departments. Through iteratively developing and refining six different prompt strategies, we identified an effective few‐shot learning strategy that achieved 72.0% accuracy and a 70.8% F‐score with the optimal prompt. Our experimental process and outcomes explore the feasibility of using ChatGPT to support manual coding for policy documents and suggest a coding approach for conducting explicit document analysis through an interactive process between researchers and ChatGPT. Furthermore, our results initiate a wider debate on how to integrate human logic with ChatGPT logic, along with the evolving relationship between researchers and AI tools.

The challenge of widespread misinformation has expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments worldwide have adopted or are designing a variety of information policies and tools to cope with the exacerbated challenge of misinformation. To understand the complexity and nuanced realities of government misinformation regulatory practices, we developed an analytical framework, drawing from policy design studies and the social informatics perspectives, which emphasize two aspects of misinformation policies. First, we identified agents, actions, and target groups as the essential components of policy design. We then incorporated three sociotechnical dimensions related to misinformation regulation—the context from which misinformation policies originate; the specific issues, topics, and forms of misinformation; and the channels for its creation and spread. We applied this framework to 139 policy documents systematically collected from the federal government of the United States and the central government of China, for the purpose of understanding and comparing misinformation regulations in two distinct contexts. Beyond those well-known political narratives in each country, this chapter identified the nuanced differences in their misinformation policies and the different stages or maturity of misinformation policymaking. The empirical findings showcase the analytical power of this framework and shed light on policy practices and the direction of future research.

ABSTRACTEarly social informatics research focused primarily on ethnographic, site‐specific observations within organizations and was based on smaller case studies. The rising of social media and big data availability have made large‐scale data analysis accessible and easier. This has informed social informatics perspectives by examining the roles and impacts of social media in our work and social lives. The panel aims to utilize principles of social informatics approach to understand emerging issues related to social media, which are pervasive in almost every aspect of our daily lives, and to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) more broadly. To push social informatics research forward, the panelists will address the questions regarding the future of social informatics.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been accelerating digital transformation around the globe since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020. Individuals, organizations, and governments have experienced unprecedented information and communication technologies (ICT) adoption and use, willingly or not. The backdrop of the pandemic provides a unique opportunity for us to reflect on and reexamine our relationships with ICTs, as we envision the postpandemic future. This chapter introduces the entire book, especially the core idea of “social informatics” that serves as the underlying theoretical foundation of the book and its chapters to echo the concerns about ICT use and consequences during the pandemic. This edited volume presents empirical cases from different countries and our theoretical exploration of ICT usage and consequences by covering four major themes—governance, information behavior, community, and everyday life. These chapters shed light on the importance of ICTs and unpack the complexity of technology-related practices during the global crisis. We hope to intrigue other researchers to examine the emerging social changes and evolving use of digital tools in a still-unfolding pandemic era.

The Usage and Impact of ICTs during the COVID-19 PandemicThis book takes a holistic view of the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) during the pandemic through the lens of social informatics, as it is critical to our understanding of the relations between society and technology.Specific attention is given to various stakeholders and social contexts, with analysis at the individual, group, community, and society levels.Pushing the boundaries of information science research with timely and critical research questions, this edited volume showcases information science research in the context of COVID-19, by specifically accentuating sociotechnical practices, activities, and ICT interventions during the pandemic.Its social informatics focus appeals to a broad audience, and its global and international orientation provides a timely, innovative, and much-needed perspective to information science.This book is unique in its interdisciplinary nature as it consists of research studies on the intersections between ICTs and health, culture, social interaction, civic engagement, information dissemination, work, and education.Chapters apply a range of research methods, including questionnaire surveys, content analyses, and case studies from countries in Asia, Europe, and America, as well as global and international comparisons.The book's primary target audience includes scholars and students in information and library science, particularly those interested in the social aspect of the information society.It may be of interest to information professionals, library practitioners, educators, and information policymakers, as well as scholars and students in science and technology studies, cultural studies, political science, public administration, sociology, and communication studies.

This study analyzes five countries' falseinformation policies before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.Building upon existing discussions of regulation models, this paper uses a qualitative, comparative case study method to unpack the characteristics of false-information policies in each country.The before-after comparisons show that each country has a unique evolving path of falseinformation regulation and that the state has enhanced or attempted to enhance its role in battling against the infodemic during the pandemic.The regulatory practices are a dynamic process and involve not only government and social media platforms but also multiple other actors, which is leading to more complex practices and blurring the boundary of existing models.We discuss the limitation of existing regulation models and suggest a relational perspective to understand the underlying relations between the state, platforms, and other stakeholders.

ICTs are pivotal in the existing social order and especially during the COVID‐19 global pandemic. This panel focuses on the use of ICTs by different actors, including individuals, nonprofit organizations, and governments around the globe in responding to this COVID crisis. We tackle three essential questions about ICTs and the global crisis. First, what role do ICTs play in a global crisis? Second, how do ICTs affect social order when tensions between control, autonomy, and power shift? Third, what are the theoretical and practical implications of ICT use during a global health crisis? Each of the panelists will discuss their ongoing research in social informatics or health informatics as relates to the panel theme and central questions in order to provide a holistic view of the role of ICTs during this global pandemic.

ABSTRACTThis paper introduces the uniqueness of the Chinese online crowdfunding platform (CFP). The authors investigated national policies and 2,000 projects collected from the largest Chinese charitable CFP. The analysis shows that besides providing a channel to access the public, platforms partially facilitate the administration and supervision of online fundraising under the control of the government. Moreover, there is a great diversity among projects that are unevenly distributed by their category and geolocation.

This article bringings greater conceptual clarity to research on trolling, with a study that maps college students' perceptions of trolling behaviors and compares them to the media and scholarly interpretations. It identifies 4 behavioral types - serious trolling (not funny and ideologically motivated), humorous trolling, serious non-trolling behaviors, and humorous non-trolling - and 7 behavioral dimensions - meaningfulness, representativeness, pseudo-sincerity, intentionality, provocativeness, repetition, and satire. Employing Formal Concept Analysis it charts relationships between behavioral types and dimensions and develops a typology.

Online trolling has become increasingly prevalent and visible in online communities. Perceptions of and reactions to trolling behaviors varies significantly from one community to another, as trolling behaviors are contextual and vary across platforms and communities. Through an examination of seven trolling scenarios, this article intends to answer the following questions: how do trolling behaviors differ across contexts; how do perceptions of trolling differ from case to case; and what aspects of context of trolling are perceived to be important by the public? Based on focus groups and interview data, we discuss the ways in which community norms and demographics, technological features of platforms, and community boundaries are perceived to impact trolling behaviors. Two major contributions of the study include a codebook to support future analysis of trolling and formal concept analysis surrounding contextual perceptions of trolling.

Trolling behaviors are extremely diverse, varying by context, tactics, motivations, and impact. Definitions, perceptions of, and reactions to online trolling behaviors vary. Since not all trolling is equal or deviant, managing these behaviors requires context sensitive strategies. This paper describes appropriate responses to various acts of trolling in context, based on perceptions of college students in North America. In addition to strategies for dealing with deviant trolling, this paper illustrates the complexity of dealing with socially and politically motivated trolling.