Research Focus Areas
The Department of Information Science focuses on the following research focus areas:
-
-
-
-
-
Our Departmental Research Committee is chaired by Prof Archie Dick. Supervisors are listed underneath each focus area
1. Knowledge management and Competitive intelligence
Dimensions
|
Special interests
|
Policy and strategy
|
- Theories and models of strategy
- Strategies and policies for various environments
- Measurement
|
Tools and techniques
|
- Audits
- Communities of practice
- Storytelling
- Intranets and portals
- Expert locators
- Knowledge maps
|
Organisational culture and leadership
|
- Creating a conducive environment and culture for KM
- Organisational learning
- Knowledge sharing
- Impact of corporate culture
- Leadership and governance
|
Knowledge infrastructures
|
- Physical infrastructure
- ICT for KM
- Human resources
- Intellectual capital
- Indigenous knowledge
|
Knowledge systems
|
- Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS)
- Other knowledge systems
|
Competitive and business intelligence (CI/BI)
|
- Establishing a CI/BI strategy for an organisation in order to gain a competitive edge in the market
- Investigating the benefits of the implementation of CI/BI within a specific business sector
- The effective implementation of CI/BI tools in organisations to improve or sustain competitiveness
|
Teaching, theory and practice
|
- Curriculum development
- Experiential learning
- Teaching methodologies
|
2. Information processes
Supervisors
Co-supervisors for Master’s study
Dimensions
|
Special interests
|
Information organisation and representation
|
- Metadata schemas
- Taxonomies, ontologies, topic maps and folksonomies
- Abstracting, indexing and thesaurus construction
|
Information dissemination and use
|
- Current awareness services and alerting services
- Push technologies
- Informal electronic communication, including social media
- User studies
- Personal information management (PIM)
|
Information behaviour, seeking and searching
|
- Models and theories
- Information behaviour in context (including collaborative information retrieval and affect and emotion in information behaviour)
|
Information retrieval (IR)
|
- Information retrieval system design and evaluation
- Relevance studies
- Web information retrieval
|
Digitisation and curation
|
- Digital libraries
- Digitisation and curation technologies (including archiving)
- Policies and procedures
|
Information literacy (IL)
|
- Theory and practice of IL
- Workplace IL
- Digital, media and other literacies
|
Digital humanities
|
- Annotation of text corpora for retrieval and analysis
- E-lexicography
|
Data science
|
- Research data management
- FAIR data principles
- Data management plans
- Data repositories
- Data literacy
|
Teaching, theory and practice
|
- Curriculum development
- Experiential learning
- Teaching methodologies
|
3. Meta-context of information
Supervisors
Co-supervisors for Master’s study
Dimensions
|
Special interests
|
Information ethics
|
- Social media and information ethics
- Privacy (moral values, protection of private information, management of private information, surveillance, trust, information security)
- Access (accessibility, gender issues)
- Intercultural information ethics (information ethics in Africa)
- Information ethics and Governance (social justice, information ethics and power, information ethics and politics, e-democracy/e-government)
- Emerging trends and technologies (e-waste, information and cyber warfare)
|
Legal issues
|
- Intellectual property rights (including fair use, copyright)
- Open access
- Freedom of access to information and freedom of expression
- Information legislation
- Protection of Private Information Act (POPIA)
|
Socio-cultural issues
|
- Globalisation
- Information and knowledge society
- Digital divide
- Information and development
- Information poverty
- Information flows
- Informatisation and “information consumption”
|
Economic and political Issues
|
- Information economy
- Information politics
- Pricing of information (fee vs. free)
|
Information communication
|
- Accessibility of information content
- Content repackaging
|
Teaching, theory and practice
|
- Curriculum development
- Experiential learning
- Teaching methodologies
- Blended / Online Learning
|
4. Multimedia
Supervisor
Prof Theo Bothma, Email: [email protected]
Dimensions
|
Special interests
|
Virtual Reality and HCI
|
- Virtual Reality and interaction design
- Gesture control
- Lower body gesture control
- Virtual Reality and intersensory illusions
- Tangible interfaces
- Haptic feedback
- Illusory feedback
|
Game studies
|
- Game design theory
- Alternate Reality Games
- Game-based learning
- Pervasive/Immersive games
- Serious games
- Gamification in Education
- Gamification and intrinsic motivation
- Gamifying tertiary education
|
Information architecture
|
- Usability
- Heuristics based on information architecture
- Website usability based on information architecture
|
Interaction design
|
- Tangible interfaces
- Low cost tangible interfaces
- Internet of things
- Access control
- Surveillance and communication
- Augmented reality
- Augmented reality and navigating academic spaces
|
5. Book and publishing studies
Supervisors
Co-supervisors for Master’s study
Dimensions
|
Special Interests
|
Authorship
|
- Multilingual and local language writing
- Translation practices
- Profiles of South African writers
|
Current publishing practice
|
- Publishing list analysis and bibliographic studies
- Editorial policy, practice and issues for print media products
- Ownership and business profile analysis
- Product and cost analysis
- Regulation, censorship and national policies
|
Digital and e-publishing
|
- E-publishing formats
- E-publishing technologies and processes
- Publishing in multiple formats and media from single sources
- Enhanced e-books
- The impact of digital publishing
|
Book and print history
|
- Histories of publishers, printers, booksellers and related industries
- History and development of practices of reading
- History of orality, performance and print cultures
|
Dissemination and reception
|
- Access to print media products
- Distribution networks and bookselling practices
- Marketing and markets
- Audience research
- Reception and readership studies
- Reading promotion campaigns, including issues of literacy
|
Teaching, theory and practice
|
- Curriculum development
- Teaching methodologies
- Experiential learning and vocational training for the publishing industry
|
Quick links
Get Social With Us
Download the UP Mobile App