Do Smart City Policies Promote the Development of Public Libraries?: An Empirical Study Based on the Difference-in-Differences Method from China Jia Li, Xiaohua Awa Zhu, Shengnan Yang, Peng Xiao Proceedings of the ACM IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, 2025 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.
Student Engagement in Academic Libraries: A Conceptual Framework Xiaohua Zhu, Erin Whitaker, Moonhee Cho, Mei Zhang College and Research Libraries, 2025 The concept of “student engagement” is widely discussed in academic libraries, but has not been thoroughly examined from a conceptual and theoretical perspective by scholars in the Library and Information Science (LIS) field. This paper presents the findings of a qualitative research project on student engagement in academic libraries. Through in-depth interviews conducted at four academic libraries, and utilizing a flexible coding data analysis strategy, we propose a conceptual framework with antecedents, dimensions, and outcomes. This framework sheds light on the nature of student engagement in academic libraries. The process model can guide student engagement planning, communication, and evaluation efforts in academic libraries.
UNDERSTANDING ALGORITHMIC GOVERNANCE AND GOVERNANCE OF ALGORITHMS THROUGH A DISINFORMATION POLICY ANALYSIS Shengnan Yang, Xiaohua Awa Zhu Social Informatics, 2025 This chapter examines two interrelated research themes—algorithmic governance and governance of algorithms—from a social informatics perspective, drawing from a critical policy analysis approach. In an attempt to answer the question of what role algorithms play in the governance of disinformation, it analyzes key disinformation-related policies in two countries: China and the US. To conduct the analysis, this research employs a critical analytical framework to trace political discourses—particularly the problem formulation of disinformation and algorithms within policy documents—including potential solutions, expected outcomes, and broader impacts. This case study demonstrates the complex socio-technical nature of both algorithmic governance and governance of algorithms as well as the usefulness of critical perspectives in social informatics research.
Sociotechnical governance of misinformation: An Annual Review of Information Science and Technology (ARIST) paper Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo, Xiaohua Awa Zhu, Shengan Yang Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2025 Misinformation is a complex and urgent sociotechnical problem that requires meaningful governance, in addition to technical efforts aimed at detection or classification and intervention or literacy efforts aimed at promoting awareness and identification. This review draws on interdisciplinary literature—spanning information science, computer science, management, law, political science, public policy, journalism, communications, psychology, and sociology—to deliver an adaptable, descriptive governance model synthesized from past scholarship on the governance of misinformation. Crossing disciplines and contexts of study and cases, we characterize: the complexity and impact of misinformation as a governance challenge, what has been managed and governed relative to misinformation, the institutional structure of different governance parameters, and empirically identified sources of success and failure in different governance models. Our approach to support this review is based on systematic, structured literature review methods to synthesize and compare insights drawn from conceptual, qualitative, and quantitative empirical works published in or translated into English from 1991 to the present. This review contributes a model for misinformation governance research, an agenda for future research, and recommendations for contextually‐responsive and holistic governance.
Are Prompts All You Need?: Chatting with ChatGPT on Disinformation Policy Understanding Haihua Chen, Komala Subramanyam Cherukuri, Xiaohua (Awa) Zhu, Shengnan Yang Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2024 ChatGPT 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.
Guest editorial: Social informatics and designing for social good Alicia Julia Wilson Takaoka, Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo, Xiaohua (Awa) Zhu Digital Transformation and Society, 2023 “Designing for social good” has a strong interest in understanding how information and technology professionals explore issues in theory and practice through theory development, working groups and working in collaboration with users. Some things we have learned since the public launch of Chat GPT is that people are concerned with how their data are used and stored, how AI will use that data and the power of AI and other sociotechnical systems. Interest in data ethics and system accountability is on the rise as people try to understand the implications and importance of the integration of AI into our daily lives.Still, many different approaches can be taken to investigate the problem of social good. Social informatics investigates the impact society has on technology and vice versa. In evaluating design and social good from a social informatics (SI) perspective, there is an implicit acknowledgment that both technology and society impact each other, even if that relationship is not equitable, fair or reciprocal. The same is true for developing tools, frameworks and technologies that address design, bias and fairness, all of which should be evaluated using informatics along with other theories like data feminism to uncover and present limitations, barriers and ways to improve systems, algorithms, processes, technologies and more.This special selection of articles in “Designing for Social Good” provides critical exploration of the conceptualization, development, implementation and adoption, use and subsequent implications of ICTs for social good. By drawing on the foundations of SI, these included articles advance the discourse around technology before Chat GPT and other systems by examining integration, ethics, concerns, best practices and policy recommendations. These articles also emphasize the importance of information ethics and policy research to analyze regulations and question institutionalization processes aimed at information quality, resilience and safety.The first paper, “Every information context is a CRiTical Race information theory opportunity: Informatic considerations for the Information Industrial Complex,” by Anthony Dunbar highlights key points in the intersections of critical law theory, critical race theory (CRT) and critical race information theory (CRIT). In the paper “Epistemically violent Biases in AI Design: The Case Of DALL-E 2 and Starry AI,” Blessing Mbalaka builds on the work by Joy Boulamwini and Ruha Benjamin to investigate algorithmic biases in AI-generated art about countries in Africa and the African continent. Finally, Lihle and Kalisz discuss strategic implementation of digital transformation as an approach to organizational resilience in their paper “Establishing organizational resilience through developing a strategic framework for digital transformation.” Each of these articles employs a unique theoretical framework to challenge the existing structures and paradigms in society through a SI lens.Dunbar uses the tools and principles of CRT to examine how SI applies to and can change the direction of information science paradigms. A new approach to this type of analysis was created by combining different frameworks, strategies and tenets. Through CRIT, it is possible to question and enhance technocratic developments throughout all socially dynamic interactions, no matter their scope or size. Dunbar shares the ways in which CRIT strives to demarginalize and decolonize information. This work is complimented by Mbalaka’s investigation of AI-generated images.The investigation of images of family by the inclusion of the word “African” in DALL-E and Starry AI is the subject of Mbalaka’s paper. It should come as no surprise that the inclusion of this single word changes the results, but what is surprising is the results that each AI-image generator produces. Mbalaka investigates face rendering, cultural context and skin tone using epistemic violence as a framework in each platform and presents the results of each with a thoughtful critique and statistical analysis. Epistemic violence affects the production, circulation and of knowledge by denying or misrepresenting certain knowledge and the keepers of that knowledge. The current discourse about algorithmic bias will greatly benefit from the principles and awareness of epistemic violence. This paper is complimented by the contributions of Nkomo and Kalisz’s work on organizational resilience.Digital transformation, or the ways in which digital technologies are employed in an organizational setting to produce change, is the subject of Nkomo and Kalisz’s research. The authors note that the success of an implementation of a new technology is partly dependent on workplace culture and employee well-being as well as processes and infrastructure in place. They investigate disruptions caused by technologies and the pandemic in order to evaluate the enablers of and barriers to a successful digital transformation. Finally, the authors present a framework that can be applied to many organizational contexts. This framework is designed to increase organizational resilience using the theory of needs and motivation theory as a lens for analysis.The “Designing for Social Good” special section synthesizes three intersecting research communities – computing for social good, information ethics and policy and SI – in an effort to define sociotechnical good and promote socially positive design and practice moving forward in an applied, critical way. We hope you enjoyed reading these as much as we did.
Digital Ownership: The Case of E-Books Xiaohua Awa Zhu Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2023 Ownership of digital information products in the digital age presents an intricate issue. While research has shown that individuals experience a sense of ownership over their digital possessions, the scope of digital ownership rights in comparison to physical entities remains unclear. Amongst various digital products, e‐books stand out due to their ubiquity. This paper presents the results of an empirical research study that used an online survey to examine e‐book consumers' perspectives on digital ownership and digital rights. The study revealed that while most participants value and desire ownership rights, certain conventional ownership rights, such as reselling, gifting, and lending, are deemed less significant and can be relinquished by consumers due to cost‐related factors. Furthermore, contrary to prevailing assumptions, the study found no discernible generational gap concerning people's perceptions of digital ownership rights. These findings hold implications for researchers, policymakers, and public‐interest groups seeking to advocate for the public's digital rights.
Social Informatics Perspectives on Emerging Technologies: The Way Forward Noriko Hara, Pnina Fichman, Seung Woo Chae, Eric Meyer, Howard Rosenbaum, Steve Sawyer, Shengnan Yang, Xiaohua Awa Zhu Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2023 Early 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.
Battling Disinformation Intermediaries: An Analysis of Information Policies 29th Annual Americas Conference on Information Systems Amcis 2023, 2023
Toward a Sociotechnical ramework for Misinformation Policy Analysis Xiaohua Zhu, Shengnan Yang Usage and Impact of Icts During the Covid 19 Pandemic, 2023 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.
A Comparison of False-Information Policies in Five Countries before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2022
Serving the Community with Trustworthy Government Information and Data: What Can We Learn from the Public Librarians? X Zhu, J Winberry, K McBee, E Cowell, JS Headrick Public Library Quarterly 41 (6), 574-595 , 2022 2022 Citations: 4
Ownership vs access: consumers' digital ownership perceptions and preferences X Zhu, M Cho Aslib Journal of Information Management 73 (6), 904-920 , 2021 2021 Citations: 14
Open government data licensing: An analysis of the US state open government data portals X Zhu, C Thomas, JC Moore, S Allen International Conference on Information, 260-273 , 2021 2021 Citations: 6
The use of ICT during COVID‐19 S Yang, P Fichman, X Zhu, M Sanfilippo, S Li, KR Fleischmann Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology 57 (1 … , 2020 2020 Citations: 169
Buy, subscribe, or borrow? Consumers’ use preferences for information products X Zhu, M Cho 2019 Citations: 2
Do I Own It? US and Chinese college students' digital ownership perceptions X Zhu, T Yang Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology 56 (1 … , 2019 2019 Citations: 4
An evaluation of US municipal open data portals: A user interaction framework X Zhu, MA Freeman Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 70 (1), 27-37 , 2019 2019 Citations: 106
Innovation in Search of a Context X Zhu Information & Culture 54 (2), 220-242 , 2019 2019 Citations: 2
Revealing Perception Gaps between Users and Academic Libraries: A Public Relations Perspective X Zhu, M Cho, M Zhang, EE Whitaker 2019
E-book ILL in academic libraries: A three-year trend report X Zhu The Journal of Academic Librarianship 44 (3), 343-351 , 2018 2018 Citations: 23
Factors influencing undergraduate use of e-books: A mixed methods study D Potnis, K Deosthali, X Zhu, R McCusker Library & Information Science Research 40 (2), 106-117 , 2018 2018 Citations: 64
The end of ownership?: An investigation of users' preferences and perceptions of ownership configurations X Zhu, M Cho Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology 55 (1 … , 2018 2018 Citations: 11
The failure of an early episode in the open government data movement: A historical case study X Zhu Government Information Quarterly 34 (2), 256-269 , 2017 2017 Citations: 38
A tentative evaluation framework for digital archaeological data sites MA Freeman, X Zhu Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology 54 (1 … , 2017 2017
Perish or Flourish? An Investigation of E-book Interlibrary Loan in U S. Academic Libraries X Zhu, L Shen, R McCusker 2017 Citations: 1
Driven adaptation: A grounded theory study of licensing electronic resources X Zhu Library & Information Science Research 38 (1), 69-80 , 2016 2016 Citations: 9
What we teach: An assessment of graduate-level digital curation syllabi C Hank, N Lasley, X Zhu, K Shireman, C Kirkpatrick iPRES 2015 , 2015 2015 Citations: 2
A survey of e-book interlibrary loan policy in US academic libraries X Zhu, L Shen Interlending & Document Supply 42 (2/3), 57-63 , 2014 2014 Citations: 29
Interlibrary loan of e-books in US academic libraries X Zhu, L Shen 2014-04-26]. http://ilds2013. calis. edu. cn/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/New … , 2013 2013 Citations: 3
How institutionalized are model license use terms? An analysis of e-journal license use rights clauses from 2000 to 2009 KR Eschenfelder, TI Tsai, X Zhu, B Stewart College & research libraries 74 (4), 326 , 2013 2013 Citations: 19
MOST CITED SCHOLAR PUBLICATIONS
The use of ICT during COVID‐19 S Yang, P Fichman, X Zhu, M Sanfilippo, S Li, KR Fleischmann Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology 57 (1 … , 2020 2020 Citations: 169
An evaluation of US municipal open data portals: A user interaction framework X Zhu, MA Freeman Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 70 (1), 27-37 , 2019 2019 Citations: 106
Factors influencing undergraduate use of e-books: A mixed methods study D Potnis, K Deosthali, X Zhu, R McCusker Library & Information Science Research 40 (2), 106-117 , 2018 2018 Citations: 64
The failure of an early episode in the open government data movement: A historical case study X Zhu Government Information Quarterly 34 (2), 256-269 , 2017 2017 Citations: 38
A survey of e-book interlibrary loan policy in US academic libraries X Zhu, L Shen Interlending & Document Supply 42 (2/3), 57-63 , 2014 2014 Citations: 29
E-book ILL in academic libraries: A three-year trend report X Zhu The Journal of Academic Librarianship 44 (3), 343-351 , 2018 2018 Citations: 23
How institutionalized are model license use terms? An analysis of e-journal license use rights clauses from 2000 to 2009 KR Eschenfelder, TI Tsai, X Zhu, B Stewart College & research libraries 74 (4), 326 , 2013 2013 Citations: 19
Ownership vs access: consumers' digital ownership perceptions and preferences X Zhu, M Cho Aslib Journal of Information Management 73 (6), 904-920 , 2021 2021 Citations: 14
Social construction of authorized users in the digital age X Zhu, KR Eschenfelder College & research libraries 71 (6), 548-568 , 2010 2010 Citations: 13
The end of ownership?: An investigation of users' preferences and perceptions of ownership configurations X Zhu, M Cho Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology 55 (1 … , 2018 2018 Citations: 11
The National Site Licensing of Electronic Resources: An Institutional Perspective. X Zhu Journal of Library & Information Studies 9 (1) , 2011 2011 Citations: 10
Driven adaptation: A grounded theory study of licensing electronic resources X Zhu Library & Information Science Research 38 (1), 69-80 , 2016 2016 Citations: 9
Open government data licensing: An analysis of the US state open government data portals X Zhu, C Thomas, JC Moore, S Allen International Conference on Information, 260-273 , 2021 2021 Citations: 6
