Conference Agenda (All times are shown in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) unless otherwise noted)

This is the first extensive research on the information practices of Finnish transgender people. This research focuses on embodied information, which is defined as information derived from the sensory and sentient experiences of people in practice. The findings contribute to the developing knowledge on transgender individuals’ experiences of the ways that senses, affects, body-related self-observations and observations of other people’s bodies are a part of information practices. The conceptual framework of the research builds upon a theorisation of information behaviour and practices, transitions and queer theory and transgender studies in an interdisciplinary fashion. Methodologically, interpretive phenomenology informs the research. The thesis is founded on four peer-reviewed articles (Studies I, II, III and IV), and a compilation report combining their results with a focus on transgender individuals’ embodied experiences. The empirical material was

collected through 12 interviews in 2013 (Study I) and 25 interviews in 2016 (Studies II, III and IV) with Finnish people who identified as transgender. The data were analysed using qualitative content analysis and queer phenomenology. The findings of this research illustrate how personal and interpersonal factors shape information practices of transgender individuals, including information encountering, seeking, creation, sharing, use, avoiding and hiding.

Nowadays, users trusting search engines appears fundamental, although this claim is build on little research. In face of new developments of search, the question comes up again: to what extent users trust a search engine, how it is build and which consequences does it imply. Based on interdisciplinary research on trust, the individual concepts of trust, trustworthiness,

and trust-related behavior are outlined and applied to the web search context. To date, there is not an adequate instrument for collecting the ambiguous concept of trust for technical artifacts like search engines. Therefore, a trust measure will be developed with the help of a qualitative laboratory study and validated with an online survey. Afterwards, the measure will be applied

in an experiment to the search engines Google and Ecosia and scenarios from the health and finance domain. The expected results indicate the causes and effects of trust in a search engine. In consequence, misplaced and legitimate cases of trust in search engines can be identified and discussed among civil society, researchers, and policymakers.

In recent decades, there has been an alarming increase in the number of university and college students struggling with intensifying psychological distress, which has become a mental health crisis on campuses. To address this issue, this study proposes social VR as a potential platform to promote social interaction and improve mental well-being for college students. In this study, 68 students explored a variety of social VR applications in a classroom setting. Results showed that a) virtual space, audio, avatar, communication types, and activities were key contributing features that facilitated social interaction among college students in social VR and have the potential to enhance mental wellness, and b) the anonymous nature, communicative cues, and designated private areas provided by social VR platforms were effective in facilitating self-disclosure, indicating social VR’s potential in delivering mental health services such as individual and group counseling and therapy. This study provides evidence that social VR can enhance social interaction and communication while serving as a platform for professional mental health care, a venue that has yet to be explored in previous studies.