Research

Inclusive Services to Enhance Immigrants' Resilience to Crisis

Project Introduction

Crisis events disrupt the normal functioning of individuals, groups, or systems, and can result in damaging impacts in various scenarios, including natural disasters, public health emergencies, and economic collapses. They present significant challenges or threats to the safety and well-being of individuals and can strain resources and exacerbate inequalities. Immigrants in under-resourced communities are especially vulnerable. Due to language barriers, legal status, social marginalization, and cultural differences, immigrants often face challenges in the access to related information, government assistance, and social support for crisis preparedness, response, and recovery. In the United States, approximately 14% of the population includes immigrants from various global locales; Of the 358 counties, 10% to 54% of the residents are either naturalized or non-US citizen immigrants, many of whom are non-English speakers or English learners. 

This project will support the development and implementation of emergency and disaster management plans to strengthen the ability of libraries to provide services to affected communities. The project team has previously identified the most in-need US counties with high immigrant ratios, high crisis risks, and low resources, which will be the study areas to investigate research questions of the information needs of immigrants and how public libraries can respond to enhance their resilience.

Project Outcomes

Publications

• Dinh, L., Hong, L., Dumas, C., Patin, B., Ghosh, S., Li, L., & Khoury, C. (2024) Social Media and Crisis Informatics Research in LIS (Panel) (Accepted by ASIS&T 2024) [Proposal][Slides]

• Hong, L., Luo, P., Blanco, E. & Song, X. (2024). Outcome-Constrained Large Language Models in Countering Hate Speech. (Accepted by the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing Main Conference (EMNLP 2024)) [Paper][Poster][Slides]

• Zeleke, M., Hong, L., & Smith, D. (2024). Cross-Continental Dialogues: Analyzing the Dichotomy of Social Media Discourse in Ethiopian Social Movement #Nomore. (Accepted by 2024 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2024)) [Paper][Slides]

• Hong, L., Roeschley, A., & Yunfei D. (2024). Mapping Areas in Need of Immigrant-Focused Crisis Support. iConference 2024 Proceedings. (Best Poster Award Finalist) [Paper][Poster][Slides]

Presentations

• Song, X., Sujana, M., Perez, S., & Hong, L. (September, 2024) Assessing AI-Generated Counter-Speech in Human Likeness. Day of Health Informatics and Data Science, University of North Texas. (Top 10 finalist) [Poster]
• Gautier, K., Anik, A., Kandadai, S., Song, X., & Hong, L. (September, 2024) Enhancing Health Communication: Developing LLM-based Models to Generate Effective Counter Speech Against Misinformation. Day of Health Informatics and Data Science, University of North Texas. (1st place winner) [Poster]

Data and Code

• To be released

Toolkit

• To be released

PIs

Project Director and Lead Principal Investigator

• Dr. Lingzi Hong, Assistant Professor of Data Science in the Department of Information Science at UNT.

Co-Principal Investigator

• Dr. Ana Roeschley, Assistant Professor of Information Science and Director of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Science at UNT.
• Dr. Yunfei Du, Professor of Library Science and Associate Dean of Academics in College of Information at UNT.

Advisory Board

• Dr. Vanessa Frias-Martinez, Associate Professor in College of Information Studies and UMIACS, Director of Computational Linguistics and Information Processing Lab and Co-Lead of the Values-Centered AI Institute at the University of Maryland College Park. Her research interest includes emergency response, fairness of AI, and smart cities. 
• Dr. Marcia A. Mardis, Professor and Associate Dean for Research in College of Communication & Information, Director of the Information Institute at Florida State University. Her research intersects community disaster resiliency, learning resources, and workforce development.
• Dr. Edward Benoit III, Associate Director and Associate Professor in the School of Library & Information Science at Louisiana State University, the founder of the IMLS-funded PROTECCT-GLAM, a project to develop a climate disaster risk assessment scale for galleries, libraries, archives, and museums.
• Dr. DeeDee M. Bennett Gayle, Associate Professor of Emergency Management, Director of the Extreme Events, Social Equity, and Technology Laboratory at University at Albany, SUNY. Her research expertise is in social equity during disasters, social vulnerability in disasters, and marginalized populations.
• Dr. Hao-Che Wu, Associate Professor at the Emergency Management and Disaster Science at UNT. 

• Dr. Ana Cleveland, Regents Professor, Sarah Law Kennerly Endowed Professor, and Director of the Health Informatics Program at UNT.

• Adam S. Davis, Director of System Services at the Palm Beach County Library System. He has been actively involved in library services to help communities in the response and recovery from disasters.

• Dr. Michele A. L. Villagran, Assistant Professor in the College of information at San Jose State University. She is the current REFORMA Research Committee Chair and REFORMA Education Committee Chair. REFORMA is the national association to promote library and information services to Latinos and the Spanish-speaking.
• Nora Rizvi, Employment Specialist at the International Rescue Committee (IRC). IRC is a national organization that helps people affected by conflicts or disasters to survive and recover.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under Grant (IMLS) LG-256661-OLS-24. The opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of IMLS.

Last updated Oct 25, 2024