Speaker: Professor Kay O’Halloran, Department of Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool
Abstract: In this talk, I discuss a context-based multimodal information fusion approach which is being developed in the Digital Media & Society Institute (DMSI) at the University of Liverpool. The approach involves developing infrastructure for collecting, storing, analysing and visualising multimodal communication across media platforms to understand information flows and distortions according to contextual factors (e.g. time, spatial location, population data etc). The approach is demonstrated through analysis of the views and emotions about COVID-19 expressed in government communications, online news, and social media in Liverpool during the pandemic. Specifically, the language, images and videos which circulated during the pandemic and the ways in which information was distorted, either unintentionally or deliberately, are being studied. The approach involves layering the analysis on a virtual 3D map of the Liverpool City Region. In this case, the goal is to improve the ways in which information and guidance are provided to communities and to address public concerns as they arise in the future. The context-based multimodal information fusion approach can be used to study communication during other crisis situations and events.
Bio: Kay O’Halloran is Chair Professor, Head of Department of Communication and Media, and Co-Director of the Digital Media & Society Institute (DMSI) at University of Liverpool. Kay’s research area is multimodal analysis. Her early work involved multimodal approaches to mathematics, and following this she focused on developing new digital tools and techniques for analysing text, images and videos. More recently, she has been developing mixed methods approaches for analysis of large multimodal data sets.
