Triad of SSHRC Insight Grants brings almost $600K of new research funding to Sprott

Three faculty members from the Sprott School of Business have received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s Insight Grant program. These grants, which support research excellence in the social sciences and humanities, are available to established and emerging researchers for two to five years.

Aron’s research program centers on digital marketing, and this project aims to advance knowledge about how marketing decisions are made and implemented, the role of technologies in these decisions, and the potential positive, negative, and neutral outcomes that can result. Focusing on the perspective of practitioners, Aron will view digital marketing as an arena dominated by computational tools that rely on consumer surveillance, automated data processing, and algorithmic decision-guidance techniques. Findings from this project will bolster understanding of contemporary marketer behaviours and of the sociotechnical nature of their roles while informing policy initiatives aimed at consumer protection.

Angela has devised a two-part study to help address the lack of understanding of workplace mistreatment experienced by people with disabilities. The first part involves qualitative interviews that will explore the specific manifestations of mistreatment and the ways perpetrator identity influences mistreatment. The second part will employ a longitudinal mixed-methods diary approach to investigate factors that discourage or encourage individuals with disabilities to speak out about their mistreatment. This research strand will also identify how individuals’ responses impact personal and job-related well-being. Findings will contribute to theoretical understanding about workplace mistreatment, inform future studies, and clarify how organizations that support employees with disabilities can best fulfill their mandate.

Samira plans to investigate the design and efficacy of warning messages in preventing social media overuse and in curtailing problematic engagement. She will examine how such aspects of warning messages as content, linguistic style, and presentation features influence users’ appraisal of both the potential threat and their coping responses. She will also explore how contextual conditions (e.g., social media activities, platform features, usage patterns, and user characteristics) impact warning effectiveness. Conducted through lab experiments and field studies, this work will improve understanding of social media warning messages, inform the design of AI research and conversational intelligence, and empower users to engage in social media in ways that support their overall well-being.