Early-Career Scholar Series
2024-10-04 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | UCLA Moore Hall, Room 3320
The UCLA Department of Education Early-Career Scholar Series invites Department faculty, staff, and students to come together to engage with early-career scholars and their research, and build community over a Department lunch at noon following the session. At each session, an early-career scholar will either present their research or workshop a paper or study in progress facilitated by an advanced-career scholar.

This monthly event strives to foster community and connection within our Department, come together to learn more about our early-career scholars, and support their work. Coffee and refreshments will be served.

GSAE Coffee & Donut Drop-In
2024-10-09 10:00 - 12:00 | Moore Hall Student Lounge
Happy Fall Quarter! For New Bruins, welcome to UCLA. It was great seeing some of you yesterday, and we hope everyone had a restorative summer!

We’d like to introduce ourselves for the school year. The three of us (Belle, Flora, and Ingrid) will be serving as the co-chairs of the Graduate Student Association of Education (GSAE), a subdivision of the larger Graduate Student Association (GSA). GSAE is made up of student representatives from each of your divisions, which you can find the information for here! If you are seeing open spaces on this contact sheet for your program, we highly encourage you to sign up to become a student representative (responsibilities here)! GSAE as a whole holds social events for the department, works with your respective student representatives, and advocates for student voices by working with our faculty and administration.

Our first event will be on Wednesday, October 9th. Please drop in for some coffee & donuts to meet and chat with us! The flyer is below – we hope to see you there!

Undergraduate Intro to Mental Health & Resilience Resources
2024-10-09 16:00 - 18:00 | Rise Center at Lu Valle Commons
Are you a new incoming student or a returning student? Not sure how to manage stress? 🧠

Join us for an enlightening workshop in collaboration with the UCLA RISE Center, designed to provide an overview of all the mental health resources available on campus. This session will equip you with essential tools and strategies for managing your mental health effectively. Whether you’re navigating academic pressures, personal challenges, or simply seeking to enhance your well-being, this workshop will offer valuable insights and practical guidance. Don’t miss this opportunity to connect with fellow students and take proactive steps towards a healthier, more balanced life. Everyone is welcome! 🪷

Join Us To Discuss Reform in Child Welfare for Families Experiencing Domestic Violence in the Antelope Valley
2024-10-15 09:30 - 11:30 | Lancaster Library, 601 W Lancaster Blvd, Lancaster, California, 93534, United States
On behalf of the UCLA Pritzker Center, we are pleased to announce the forthcoming release of a new report: Collaborative Reform in Child Welfare for Families Experiencing Domestic Violence.

To hear more about the report and additional efforts to make actionable reform, please join us for a special presentation with Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, DCFS Director Brandon Nichols, and other distinguished guests.

Undergraduate Pumpkin Pick-N-Paint
2024-10-16 15:30 - 18:30 | UCLA Moore Hall Reading Room, 457 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Join us for pumpkin decorating to celebrate the return of spooky season! We’ll provide the pumpkin, paint, and decorations. Just bring your creativity!

RSVP today to reserve your very own cute mini pumpkin! 🎃

Information Studies Colloquia: The Algorithm is a Lie: revisiting blackboxing, transparency and user engagement with AI with Noopur Raval
2024-10-17 14:00 - 16:00 | California
Professor Noopur Raval | October 17 | The Algorithm is a Lie: revisiting blackboxing, transparency and user engagement with AI

Abstract | With the rise of complex computational systems and their real-world applications in all domains of life – work, hiring, socializing, criminal justice etc., we are often told that algorithmic systems are inherently complex, require high degrees of technical expertise, and thus, are unknowable to a degree. We are also often informed that harmful outcomes of algorithmic systems are caused by “bias” and if we control for bias in training data and design, we can make these systems better – or even less harmful and racist and sexist. In response, computational and legal scholars and activists have developed auditing tools to unpack “blackboxed” algorithmic systems and reveal how they function in the hope of producing better social and economic outcomes.

This talk draws on years of ethnographic work across projects and mobilizes case studies to demonstrate how the expertise and unknowability of algorithmic systems is a ruse and a distraction from fundamental questions of values and pedagogy in Computer Science and associated fields. These fundamental challenges are more than just bias or glitches that can be fixed technically. The talk will also argue that algorithmic systems can be investigated as socio-technical systems by non-expert users. In doing so, the talk invites scholars across LIS fields to develop experiential, participatory, archival and experimental methodologies that tackle algorithms as social objects.

Speaker Bio | Dr. Noopur Raval is an assistant professor in Information Studies at UCLA. She is a feminist interdisciplinary interpretivist researcher and educator with a deep interest in how people create and maintain a good life and how technology can support visions of good work and life across the world. She received her PhD in Informatics from UC Irvine and has held positions at UC Santa Cruz, AI Now Institute at NYU, Microsoft Research and Xerox Research in the past.

2024 California Library Association (CLA) Annual Conference
2024-10-18 16:30 - 18:30 | Craft by Smoke and Fire, Pasadena, CA, 30 W Green St, Pasadena, California, 91105, United States
The UCLA Department of Information Studies Reception at the 2024 California Library Association (CLA) Annual Conference in Pasadena, CA.

Don’t miss the opportunity to network with fellow faculty, staff, and students as well as program alumni!

Reception Details

Date: Friday, October 18th

Time: 4:30 – 6:30pm

Location: Craft by Smoke and Fire, Pasadena

Please click here to RSVP for the reception or via the QR code below!

For more information about the reception, contact Michelle Maye at maye@seis.ucla.edu.

Learning Café: A Community Engaged Scholarship Series with Michelle Caswell & Anna Robinson-Sweet
2024-10-22 12:00 - 13:00 | UCLA Moore Hall Reading Room, 457 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Join us for our monthly Learning Café series highlighting the community engaged work of our faculty and graduate students. Listen, learn and engage with the work of our school.

Featuring Michelle Caswell, Ph.D., PhD, Professor, Information Studies, Special Advisor to the EVCP on Community Engaged Scholarship & Anna Robinson-Sweet, Doctoral Candidate, Information Studies

“Virtual Belonging: Assessing the Affective Impact of Digital Records Creation in Community Archives” is a four-year participatory action research project led by two community archives, Texas After Violence Project (TAVP) and South Asian American Digital Archives (SAADA), in collaboration with researchers from the UCLA Community Archives Lab. This presentation will address how academic researchers can engage in equitable, mutually beneficial relationships with independent community archives. It will also report some of the project’s findings on the impact of online peer-to-peer oral history projects and the implications of these findings for archival practice.

Future Dates

Fall 2024

Jason Dario – November 5

Chris Jadallah – November 12

Nikki Barry – December 3

Winter 2025

Karen Hunter Quartz – February 11

Thuy Do Vang – Winter Quarter

Ananda Marin – Winter Quarter

Spring 2025

Cinthya Salazar – Spring Quarter

Melissa Villa-Nicolas – Spring Quarter

Julissa Muñiz – Spring Quarter

Information Studies Colloquia: User-Centered Knowledge Graph Design
2024-10-24 14:00 - 16:00 | California
This is a virtual presentation. Sign up for the event on this Google Form.

User-Centered Knowledge Graph Design

This presentation outlines the research I conducted as a part of my PhD dissertation, in which I involved the group of students in an interdisciplinary PhD program to design a knowledge-graph based information system that will help them progress through their education program and obtain their degree. I will present the human-centered design approach that was conducted through three stages, using different methodological approaches and will involve the seminar attendees in a graph design hands-on exercise using Neo4J Arrows.app.

Presenter: Dr. Stanislava Gardašević

Stanislava (Stasha) Gardasevic obtained her PhD at the Communication and Information Sciences (CIS) interdisciplinary program, University of Hawai’i at Manoa (UHM). Her research is focused on creating and visualizing user-centered knowledge graphs for information discovery and exchange in academic settings. She holds an MLIS degree from Digital Library Learning program (joint degree from Norway, Estonia, and Italy) and specializes in metadata for digital resources and interoperability. Her bachelor’s degree is in LIS from the University of Belgrade, Serbia. Currently, she is engaged in a re-description and digtization project at Kawaiaho’o Church Archives (Hawai’i), and also works as a project manager for a congressional papers digitization project at Hamilton Library, UHM. She worked as teaching assistant/course instructor at the Library and Information Science (LIS) at UHM for five years. Prior to coming to Hawaii, as a digital librarian at National Library of Serbia, she was involved in designing and creating multiple cultural heritage databases and international projects.

Stasha’s LinkedIn Profile

Book Talk and Signing with OiYan Poon Ph.D.
2024-10-30 18:15 - 20:00 | James West Alumni Center, Founders Conference Room
[RSVP Link Coming Soon]

UCLA is inviting Dr. OiYan Poon to speak about her new book, “Asian American is Not a Color: Conversations on Race, Affirmative Action, and Family.” The talk will take place Oct. 30, from 6:30 – 8 p.m. PDT at the James West Alumni Center.

Please RSVP via the link above, and indicate whether you plan to attend in-person or virtually on Zoom. The Zoom Registration Link will be provided after the RSVP form is completed.

Early-Career Scholar Series Presenter: Dr. Nicole Mancevice and Scholar Facilitator Dr. Marjorie Elaine
2024-11-01 10:00 - 11:00 | UCLA Moore Hall, Room 3320
The UCLA Department of Education Early-Career Scholar Series invites Department faculty, staff, and students to come together to engage with early-career scholars and their research, and build community over a Department lunch at noon following the session. At each session, an early-career scholar will either present their research or workshop a paper or study in progress facilitated by an advanced-career scholar.

This monthly event strives to foster community and connection within our Department, come together to learn more about our early-career scholars, and support their work. Coffee and refreshments will be served.

In this session, Dr. Mancevice will workshop a preliminary analysis of data from a yearlong study of young children’s pathways of becoming readers. The primary data source for the analysis was a series of photograph-based interviews conducted during three periods of the school year. Dr. Mancevice encourages comments and questions regarding the analysis as well as next steps for future research.

Dr. Mancevice is an Assistant Professor-in-Residence in the Social Research Methodology Division and Associate Director of CONNECT. Her research focuses on reading instruction, curriculum design, and teachers’ professional learning. She is especially interested in collaborative approaches to designing and conducting research with educators. Dr. Mancevice’s current work examines young children’s pathways of becoming readers from their perspectives.

With Different Eyes: A Conference for Teachers of Multilingual, Multicultural Students Across the Disciplines
2024-11-02 08:30 - 15:00 | California
The UCLA Writing Project invites you to the 34th annual With Different Eyes Conference, November 2, 2024. We focus on access and equity for all students, with our multilingual and multicultural students center-stage, including newcomers, students approaching advanced literacy, and speakers of African American English and indigenous languages. We attend to a spectrum of social justice issues—connected to matters of race and gender, environment, media. Given we are the Writing Project, we love to demonstrate how writing empowers all students, up and down the grade levels and across content areas.

Our conference theme this year: The Power of Words, The Strength of Story. Many students don’t think they have any stories to tell. We know otherwise. How do we as teachers encourage students to speak and write their own, everyday stories? And help them realize the stunning impact their words carry?

November 2, 20248:30 AM – 3:00 PMat UCLA

SCHEDULE

8:30 – 9:40 Keynote Speaker Joseph Velasco, “The Power of Story: Helping Students Find Their Voice”9:50 – 11:05 First Session Workshops11:15 – 12:30 Second Session Workshops12:30 – 1:30 Lunch Break1:45 – 3:00 Third Session Workshops

Conference Fee: $185 per participant

Full-time Students: $40

Includes parking, continental breakfast and lunch

Ask your administrators to support your attendance! We accept purchase orders.

GSAE Halloween Candy Swap
2024-11-04 16:30 - 18:00 | UCLA Moore Hall Student Lounge 2nd Floor
Join GSAE on Monday 11/4 from 4:30-6pm on the 2nd floor lounge in Moore Hall!

Come meet others in the department, bring some candy and swap to try something new. We are also raffling off 3 additional “UCLA Education” t-shirts at the event! Be there for new friends, new candy, and perhaps even new merch!

Learning Café: A Community Engaged Scholarship Series with Jason Dorio
2024-11-05 12:00 - 13:00 | UCLA Moore Hall Reading Room, 457 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Join us for our monthly Learning Café series highlighting the community engaged work of our faculty and graduate students. Listen, learn and engage with the work of our school.

Featuring Jason Nunzio Dorio, PhD, Associate Director of Undergraduate Programs for Community Engagement, Ed&IS

Based on personal observations, student work, and feedback grounded in community-engaged praxis themes, Jason will reflect on his time as the current Associate Director of Undergraduate Programs for Community Engagement. He will showcase community engagement opportunities for students in the Education and Social Transformation undergraduate program, discuss promising practices and challenges of community engagement, and share ideas for future cultivation of community-engaged praxis.

Future Dates

Fall 2024

Nikki Barry – December 3

Winter 2025

Karen Hunter Quartz – February 11

Thuy Do Vang – Winter Quarter

Ananda Marin – Winter Quarter

Spring 2025

Cinthya Salazar – Spring Quarter

Melissa Villa-Nicolas – Spring Quarter

Julissa Muñiz – Spring Quarter

Chris Jadallah – Spring Quarter

Creating Inclusive Sociotechnical Systems: Classification, Inequality, and Expertise in Epilepsy Care
2024-11-05 14:00 - 15:00 | CSW | Streisand Center, 1500 Public Affairs Building
Inclusive Sociotechnical Systems: Classification, Inequality, and Expertise in Epilepsy Care

Come join us for an enlightening talk by Dr Megh Marathe on Inclusive Sociotechnical Systems: Classification, Inequality, and Expertise in Epilepsy Care event. This in-person event will be held at Room 1500, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Description: This talk examines how classification amplifies or alleviates the exclusion of marginalized people in healthcare. Through the case of epilepsy, the talk shows how reductionist classifications lead to narrow definitions of wellbeing and reinstate gendered, racist, classist, and ableist hierarchies. These findings advance our understanding of how experts navigate classificatory decisions and of technology’s role in amplifying inequality and how to work towards a more just society.

The talk will be followed by a Q&A and a reception.

Coffee, Pastries and a Book: SEIS Book Club 2024-25 - Virtual Welcome
2024-11-06 16:00 - 17:00 | California
Our 2024-2025 AY book club reading and discussing Prentis Hemphill’s new book, What It Takes To Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World

Fall Quarter Virtual & In-Person Meetings Virtual Welcome – Wed, Nov. 6th, 4PM – 5PM

Fall In-Person Book Club Meeting – Mon, Nov. 18th, 12PM – 1:30PM

Virtual Book Club Meeting – Wed, Dec. 11th, 4PM-5PM

(Spring and Winter Quarter Meetings TBD)

UCLA Pritzker Center Open House
2024-11-07 10:00 - 12:00 | UCLA Pritzker Center, 10945 Le Conte Ave, Suites 1350-55, Los Angeles, California, 90024, United States
Join us for our Open House event on November 7! Learn about our research, meet our team, and connect with our faculty and staff. Light refreshments will be served.

Information Studies Colloquia: The Bible is Our Deed: Owning the Past and Heritage Territoriality in Israel and Palestine with Yair Agmon
2024-11-07 14:00 - 16:00 | UCLA Moore Hall Reading Room, 457 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Please join us for our next IS Colloquium on November 7, 2:00-4:00 p.m. in the Reading Room, 3340 Moore Hall. There will be refreshments to follow. This will be the first of several colloquia this year that feature the research of completing IS doctoral students.

The Bible is Our Deed: Owning the Past and Heritage Territoriality in Israel and Palestine

Yair Agmon

Abstract

In recent years, the Israeli government and private settler organizations have invested heavily in developing heritage tourism in Palestinian Occupied Territories. Governmental grants and state authorities have funded archaeological excavations, poured money into the tourism industry, and used the force of military actions to secure Israeli itineraries moving through Palestinian territory. This heritage tourism industry focuses on promoting a powerful imaginary based on a messianic interpretation of biblical scripture, in which Israeli nationalism is projected into antiquity to claim Jewish indigeneity and ownership over the land. Yet the Israeli state and private settler organizations have also used the administrative infrastructure and state power of heritage management to dispossess and displace Palestinians. Land use policies, economic disinvestments, and legal actions have transformed sites of heritage in which Palestinians live or work into sites of Jewish settlements. I describe this process as heritage territoriality, rendering symbolic claims to origins into places of dwelling, materializing Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion’s famous idiom that “The Bible is Our Deed.”

​This presentation will map the development of heritage territoriality over the last 25 years across Israel and Palestine, closely examining The City of David National Park in East Jerusalem as the primary case study. Through this survey, I demonstrate how heritage regimes and cultural memory have produced a unique type of settlement that obfuscates the colonial violence of its own making through tourism. I discuss how, ultimately, Jewish settlers’ encounter with the material ruins of ancient Jewish life, interpreted through messianic readings of scripture, has resulted in a colonial theory of property based on a divine right to land that has produced racialized structures of identity, territory, and accumulation.

Bio

Yair Agmon is a scholar, artist, and activist. He is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA and holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts.

Bruin Family Weekend | Parents Luncheon
2024-11-08 12:00 - 13:30 | Royce Hall Ahmanson Terrace
Join us for our Ed&IS Family Luncheon on November 8th from 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM

Located at Royce Hall, Ahmanson Terrace

No RSVP Required

UCLA Bruin Family Weekend is our annual, two-day family event that’s jam-packed with exciting activities, important information about campus resources and fun opportunities to see UCLA through your student’s eyes. While bonding with your Bruin and meeting other UCLA families, enjoy presentations from top faculty, lunch with your student’s dean, parent and family workshops and so much more.

Don’t miss this chance to spend quality time with your Bruin and find out what being part of the Bruin family is all about.

Veterans Day
2024-11-11 00:00 - 23:59 | California

Iris Booth Headshot Event
2024-11-13 11:00 - 14:00 | UCLA Career Center, Strathmore, 2nd Floor
In Partnership with UCLA Career Center, join us and try out the IRIS Booth! The IRIS Booth condenses a full size photo studio into a fun, modern 20 square foot space.

Dress Code

Business wear is optional

If you don’t have business wear, we recommend wearing solid colors (e.g. beige, navy, black)

A small amount of color is fine (tie or sweater), but stay away from loud prints or a lot of color.

Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning Summit
2024-11-18 08:00 - 17:00 | California State University, Dominguez Hills, 1000 E Victoria St., Carson, California, 90747, United States
The UC|CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning is hosting our annual summit on Monday, November 18, 2024. This year’s theme is Bridging Research, Practice, and Policy to Improve Educational Opportunities.

Learn about connections between research and practice related to new education initiatives and policies in California. Network with educational leaders, practitioners, interdisciplinary researchers, policymakers, and community members to highlight the connections between neuroscience research, practice, and policy across the following four thematic strands:

Behavioral & Mental Health in Childhood

Supporting Neurodiverse Children as They Transition to School

Language & Literacy Development Among Multilingual Children

Executive Function and Self-Regulation in Adolescence

Coffee, Pastries and a Book: SEIS Book Club 2024-25 – Fall In-Person Meeting
2024-11-18 12:00 - 13:30 | IS Library, SEIS Building, Room 102
Our 2024-2025 AY book club reading and discussing Prentis Hemphill’s new book, What It Takes To Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World

Fall Quarter Virtual & In-Person Meetings

Fall In-Person Book Club Meeting – Mon, Nov. 18th, 12PM – 1:30PM

Virtual Book Club Meeting – Wed, Dec. 11th, 4PM-5PM

(Spring and Winter Quarter Meetings TBD)

Book Talk and Signing with Professor Laura Chávez-Moreno
2024-11-19 11:00 - 13:00 | UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC), 44 Haines Hall, Los Angelea, California, 90095
Books: A limited number of books will be available at no cost for UCLA students, first come first served

Laura Chávez-Moreno is an award-winning researcher, qualitative social scientist, and assistant professor at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Department of Chicana/o & Central American Studies and Department of Education. How do schools make us think about race? And where does Latinx fit in? In How Schools Make Race, Laura Chávez-Moreno shows how schools play a pivotal role in shaping the concept of race and racialized groups. In this talk, she tells the story of how the teachers and students in a racially diverse Spanish-English bilingual education program grappled with conflicting ideas about race and about the Latinx category. She explores how curriculum, pedagogy, policy, and language interplay to form, reinforce, and blur the boundaries of racialized groups. Chávez-Moreno challenges us to reconsider what makes race and invites us to see Latinx as a racialized group. Her research reveals why this shift matters–because how we think about race affects whether our schools can provide youth with an education that challenges racist ideas.

Chávez-Moreno will be joined by two esteemed panelists, Professor of Social Science and Comparative Education, and Chicana/o and Central American Studies at UCLA, and Director of the Center for Critical Race Studies in Education at UCLA, Dr. Daniel Solórzano, and Assistant Director of the Chicano Studies Research Center, Dr. Celia Lacayo. The event will be moderated by Professor of Social Research Methodology at UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies, and Co-Director of the Language, Learning, and Literacy (L3) Collaborative , Dr. Inmaculada García-Sánchez. RSVP Deadline for Lunch: November 13th, 2024

Event sponsored by the Chicano Studies Research Center, UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute, the Office of Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies, and the Language, Literacy, and Learning (L3) Collaborative at UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies.

Thanksgiving
2024-11-28 00:00 - 23:59 | California

Learning Café: A Community Engaged Scholarship Series with Nicole (Nikki) Barry
2024-12-03 12:00 - 13:00 | UCLA Moore Hall Reading Room, 457 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Join us for our monthly Learning Café series highlighting the community engaged work of our faculty and graduate students. Listen, learn and engage with the work of our school.

Featuring Nicole (Nikki) Barry, PhD., Assistant Professor of Environmental Justice Education

Community-based research design (CBDR) is an approach to research that prioritizes community goals, voices, desires, needs, and perspectives. While many researchers and community members are interested in utilizing this research model to center community strengths, build capacity, and even nation-build, it is not always clear how to integrate community participation into each aspect of the research process. In particular, data analysis and interpretation may seem more challenging when incorporating community participation. Community participation in data analysis is important to ensure that data is defined appropriately, validly measured, managed correctly, and interpreted to achieve the goals of the community and the research team. This session will explore the importance of including community participation in the data analytic process, create a space to discuss data and analysis broadly, engage participants in hands-on analysis and interpretation, and share results from an ongoing CBDR project exploring how culture affects our thinking about ecosystems.

Future Dates

Winter 2025

Karen Hunter Quartz – February 11

Thuy Do Vang – Winter Quarter

Ananda Marin – Winter Quarter

Spring 2025

Julissa Muñiz – Spring Quarter

Cinthya Salazar – Spring Quarter

Melissa Villa-Nicolas – Spring Quarter

Chris Jadallah – Spring Quarter

A Civil Rights Agenda for California's Next Quarter Century - An Education Research and Policy Briefing
2024-12-05 10:00 - 15:00 | The Citizen Hotel – Quorum Room, 926 J Street, Sacramento, California, 95814, United States
The UCLA Civil Rights Project is celebrating its first quarter century by taking a critical look forward at the upcoming generation—not at the history of civil rights challenges, debates over older policies, or at prior victories. We are focused on what California needs in the next quarter century to address the challenges facing our rapidly changing society. Our research series, “A Civil Rights Agenda for California’s Next Quarter Century,” harnesses the skills of innovative thinkers from various disciplines to think systematically and deeply about how California is transforming and what the implications are for the future of racial justice. This December 5th we will share new research and engage in discussion, charting a new path forward in an anti-civil rights era.

We hope to see you there. Register at the link.

Live Stream Link Forthcoming

Information Studies Colloquium: Social Media and the Spread of Hate (SMASH) with Dr. Christine Ong and Seul Lee
2024-12-05 14:00 - 16:00 | UCLA Moore Hall, Reading Room, 3340, 457 Portola Plaza, Los Angeles, California, 90095, United States
Please join us for our next IS Colloquium on December 5, 2:00-4:00 p.m. in the Reading Room, 3340 Moore Hall. There will be refreshments to follow.

Social Media and the Spread of Hate (SMASH)

Dr. Christine Ong and Seul Lee

Abstract

Social Media and the Spread of Hate or SMASH is an interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers, educators, and policy advocates from UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies, the Semel Healthy Campus Initiative (HCI), and an independent non-profit partner, the Organization for Social Media Safety (OFSMS). SMASH is funded by UCLA’s Initiative to Study Hate.

Our primary goal is to explore how young people encounter hate speech online, their responses to it, and ideas for making social media safe for everyone. Our study incorporates various methods including survey data gathered during school assemblies and in-depth conversations with young people about their own experiences using social media.

In the past two years, SMASH has gathered survey data from over 24,000 students in grades 5-12 across 94 schools nationwide. Our findings have informed OFSMS program improvements. Our research has also been shared by OFSMS partners in legislative testimony related to potential harms on social media and broader advocacy efforts at the local, state and national level. SMASH results may also inform future development of educational resources and interventions, such as activities to promote kindness, empathy, resiliency, and critical thinking around social media use.

Bios

Seul Lee is a doctoral candidate in Information Studies at UCLA, holding a B.A. in Management Information Systems, an M.A. in Data Science, and a graduate certificate in Digital Humanities. Her research interests involve investigating the intricate landscape of information biases, algorithmic subjectivities, and the pivotal role of digital literacy education in fostering a nuanced and comprehensive understanding of biases behind the presentation of online information. She has been working as a graduate student researcher for the Social Media and the Spread of Hate (SMASH) team to combat online hate speech by collaborating with middle and high school students in the US.

Dr. Christine Ong is a research scientist at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing (CRESST) at UCLA. Dr. Ong has extensive experience managing research and evaluation studies that involve multi-institution partnerships. She is project director of the Social Media and the Spread of Hate (SMASH) study, an interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers, educators, and policy advocates from UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies and the non-profit Organization for Social Media Safety and funded by UCLA’s Initiative to Study Hate. This work includes an examination of features of social media apps that may help fuel hateful content adolescents encounter. She also serves as an external evaluator for two NSF grants that connect to computing education, Computational Thinking Equity Project (CTEP) and Researching Equity and Antiracist Learning (REAL-CS). In addition, she is part of the California Teacher Education Research and Improvement Network (CTERIN) and sister study, California Preparation Pathway Project (CP3, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), charged with constructing and enhancing teacher-level data related to new teachers’ preparation, placement and retention in the state.

Fall Quarter Instruction Ends
2024-12-06 00:00 - 23:59 | California

Early-Career Scholar Series Presenter: Dr. Chris Jadallah and Scholar Facilitator Dr. Teresa L. McCarty
2024-12-06 10:00 - 11:00 | UCLA Moore Hall, Room 3320
The UCLA Department of Education Early-Career Scholar Series invites Department faculty, staff, and students to come together to engage with early-career scholars and their research, and build community over a Department lunch at noon following the session. At each session, an early-career scholar will either present their research or workshop a paper or study in progress facilitated by an advanced-career scholar.

This monthly event strives to foster community and connection within our Department, come together to learn more about our early-career scholars, and support their work. Coffee and refreshments will be served.

In this session, Dr. Jadallah will present a recently completed study with educators of color mapping the sociopolitical commitments that guide their pedagogies in farms, gardens, and other land-based settings (Jadallah, 2024). He will also share plans for an upcoming study extending this work in partnership with young people in the San Fernando Valley using oral history approaches to document their own families’ connections to and relationships with land. He welcomes comments, questions, and feedback.

Dr. Jadallah is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Justice in the Department of Education at UCLA, where he co-designs, implements, and studies learning environments where people come together to learn in, with, and from the natural world. Across his projects, he endeavors to foreground the knowledge of non-dominant communities as an asset for both learning and socio-ecological changemaking, operating from the premise that these communities’ everyday practices provide fertile ground from which to anchor the work of building more just and sustainable futures.

Upcoming Series Dates:

January 17, 2025

February 14, 2025

March 14, 2025

April 11, 2025

May 9, 2025

June 6, 2025
