Author Archives: Ming-Hsiang Tsou

UCSD iDash Project

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http://idash.ucsd.edu/events/webinars/tracking-disease-outbreaks-and-health-disparities-using-big-data-social-media-social

 

Real time public health data capture using Big Data and social media are now at the forefront of behavioral measurement, disease surveillance, and health promotion in many public health research activities. Public health research community is now rapidly reexamining the role of dynamic environmental-behavioral interactions and how both elements of this interaction can be modified to promote optimal health in the areas of obesity, cancer, HIV, influenza, alcohol and drug misuse research.There is a great opportunity for geographers and GIS specialists to collaborate with public health researchers and practitioners to develop comprehensive research framework, web maps, and visualization tools to promote health behaviors, detect disease outbreaks, and prevent health problems.

This webinar will discuss the impacts of big data and social media to disease outbreak surveillance and health disparities problems. Several web applications developed by the Center of Human Dynamics in the Mobile Age (HDMA) (http://humandynamics.sdsu.edu/research.html(link is external)) at San Diego State University will be introduced to demonstrate the value of social media analytics, including SMART dashboard for city-level flu outbreak monitoring tasks and GeoViewer for studying environmental-behavioral interactions

 

View the slides

Watch the webinar

Workshop on Location-based Social Media Data

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March 13-14, 2015* Athens, Georgia, USA     http://research.franklin.uga.edu/iclsm

Title: Spatiotemporal Modeling and Analytic Tools for Geo-targeted Social Media Data (Workshop at the International Conference on Location-based Social Media Data)

March 12, 2015 (Thursday), 3pm – 5pm.

Organizers: Dr. Xinyue Ye and Dr. Ming-Hsiang Tsou

This workshop will focus on the introduction of several research tools for spatiotemporal modeling and analytics of geo-targeted social media data, such as information diffusion modeling over time and space, the connection between online activities and real world human behaviors, and new knowledge discovery tools or machine learning functions. This workshop is one of the outreach activities for the NSF-IBSS (Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Science Research) project, entitled “IBSS: Spatiotemporal Modeling of Human Dynamics Across Social Media and Social Networks” (2014-2018, Award # 1416509). Project website: http://socialmedia.sdsu.edu/

 

The detail agenda for this two hour workshops is

  1. New NSF IBSS project introduction and collaboration opportunities (10 minutes, Ming)
  2. Introduction to the HDMA GitHub with Social Media APIs (10 minutes, Ming)
  3. Demo of SMART dashboard and GEO Viewers. (15 minutes, Ming)
  4. Social Media Analysis and Simulation Tools (25 minutes, Xinyue Ye)
  5. Python Programming for Twitter APIs and Web Map Application. (20 minutes, Su Han, Ph.D. student from SDSU/UCSB).
  6. Panel Discussion (40 minutes): (5 minutes short talks from each panelist, 20 minutes Group discussion)

Chair: Ming-Hsiang Tsou

Panelist:

  • Shih-Lung Shaw
  • Xinyue Ye
  • Bin Jiang
  • Xiaobai Yao

 

Total: 120 minutes (Two hours).

Meme Miscellany

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Some interesting findings from recent research:

1. Lee, Choi, C. Kim & Y. Kim (2014- Journal of Comm) found that social media engagement in political discussions leads to greater social network heterogeneity, suggesting that social media decrease echo chamber effects, rather than solidify them. Homophily does not win the day.

2. Harlow (2013- Revista de Comunicacion) found that certain narratives spread like memes during the Egyptian protests.

3. Fisher Liu, Fraustino & Jin (2015- Journal of Appl Comm Rsch) found that no single form (Twitter, Facebook, website) or source (nat’l news media, gov’t agency, local news media, local gov’t agency), or disaster type (human or natural) was systematically more likely to be forwarded or acted upon.

4. Lee & Shin (2014- Comm Rsch) found that exposure to a politician’s Twitter page increased the experience of transportability and social presence, as well as intention to vote for the candidate.

FYI: Publicizing the Grants @KSU

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Cleveland Plain Dealer Cleveland.com
(http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/12/college_enrollment_continues_t.html)

Crains Cleveland Business
(http://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20141212/FREE/141219939/kent-state-to-use-300000-grant-to-study-social-media-use-during)

WKSU Radio Station
(http://www.wksu.org/news/story/41296)

Deccan Herald
(http://www.deccanherald.com/content/447730/researchers-scan-social-media-use.html)

India.com
(http://us.india.com/whatever/researchers-to-scan-social-media-use-during-disasters-222473/)

Akron Beacon Journal Ohio.com
(http://www.ohio.com/news/local/kent-state-researchers-studying-tweets-in-crisis-situations-1.555002)

Pew Studies on Social Media and Politics

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A nice suite of studies on the role that social media are playing in U.S. politics can be found at the following links:

For a full overview of Pew Internet’s research on the internet and politics, see: http://pewinternet.org/Topics/Activities-and-Pursuits/Politics.aspx?typeFilter=5

Call for Papers: Spatiotemporal Modeling and Analytic Tools for Geo-targeted Social Media Data

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conference-title

Pre-conference Workshop (March 12) at International Conference on Location-based Social Media Data

March 13-14, 2015, Athens, Georgia, USA

http://research.franklin.uga.edu/iclsm/content/pre-conference-workshops

New insight into the dynamics of social systems can not only help to verify the existing social behavioral theories but also contribute to problem solving in the range of areas vital for the current mobile and data-rich age. Growing evidence has witnessed the interconnected spatial patterns and relationships between cyberspace and our real world. A large number of socioeconomic and human behavior datasets can be easily collected using mobile technology and social media platforms. Coupling spatial and behavioral science research can provide effective and efficient ways to visualize and analyze these big data collected for social behavioral research. A Pre-conference Workshop (March 12) around the theme of Spatiotemporal Modeling and Analytic Tools for Geo-targeted Social Media Data will be organized at International Conference on Location-based Social Media Data (March 13-14, 2015, Athens, Georgia, USA).

This workshop will focus on the introduction of several research tools for spatiotemporal modeling and analytics of geo-targeted social media data, such as information diffusion modeling over time and space, the connection between online activities and real world human behaviors, and new knowledge discovery tools or machine learning functions. This workshop is one of the outreach activities for the NSF-IBSS (Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Science Research) project, entitled “IBSS: Spatiotemporal Modeling of Human Dynamics across Social Media and Social Networks” (2014-2018, Award # 1416509).

 

This workshop plans to focus on the development of methods on this collaborative, interdisciplinary frontier. Sample topics include:

 

  1. Interactions between Activities in Physical and Virtual Spaces
  2. Social Network Analysis
  3. Social Media Analytics
  4. Space-time Data Models for Studying Human Dynamics
  5. Spatial Agent-Based Models of Human-Environment Interactions
  6. Uncovering Human Dynamics Hidden in Different Kinds of Tracking Data
  7. Visualization and Computation of Big Event Data
  8. Digital Divide and Sampling Issue in Human Dynamics Research
  9. Spatiotemporal Diffusion of Innovation and Ideas

 

Email Xinyue Ye (xye5@kent.edu) or Ming-Hsiang Tsou (mtsou@mail.sdsu.edu) the paper or abstract to be included in our workshop. Following the peer-review process, highest quality research papers will be considered for publication in a special issue and possibly an edited book.

 

Important Dates

  • Dec. 20, 2014: Full papers due
  • Jan. 15, 2015: Extended abstracts due
  • Jan. 30, 2015: Notification of paper acceptance
  • Mar. 12, 2015: Workshop
  • Mar. 13-14, 2015: Conference

 

Organizers

Xinyue Ye (xye5@kent.edu)

  • Computational Social Science Lab
  • & Department of Geography,
  • Kent State University

Ming-Hsiang Tsou (mtsou@mail.sdsu.edu)

  • Center for Human Dynamics in the Mobile Age
  • & Department of Geography,
  • San Diego State University

Building Online Social Capital for Disaster Response and Recovery Tasks

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Wildfire SNA

 

Welcome to our new website for the NSF-IBSS project: Spatiotemporal Modeling of Human Dynamics Across Social Media and Social Networks.  Specifically, the goals of this project are to:

  1. Build an interdisciplinary research framework for studying human dynamics and information diffusion from a spatiotemporal modeling perspective,
  2. Validate and improve the Multilevel Model of Meme Diffusion (M3D) communication theory for online human communications across social media and social networks,
  3. Analyze the dynamic changes of spatiotemporal patterns with two scenarios of human dynamics (disaster warnings/alerts and referendum/propositions of controversial social topics) using computational predictive methods and agent-based modeling (ABM) approaches, and
  4. Develop effective and accessible data processing, visualization, and analytical tools for social scientists to study human dynamics and information diffusion by combining high performance computing, Web geographic information system tools, agent-based modeling, and open source software.

 

One key contribution of this project is to build a prototype for the San Diego Office of Emergency Services (OES) social media outreach platform, which may be applicable for other U.S. cities in the future. The design of the prototype is to facilitate rapid dissemination of official alerts and warnings notifications from OES during disaster events via multiple social media channels to targeted population (typically in certain area). The platform can identify and recruit top 1,000 social media volunteers based on their social network influence factors and help government agencies communicate more effectively to the public and be better prepared for both natural disasters and human-made crises. This project will foster the integration of research and education in multiple disciplines, including geography, linguistics, computer science, social science, and communication. The project website will be used to publicize our research findings to the general public and create a discussion forum to involve multidisciplinary researchers. Three summer specialist meetings will be organized to facilitate future multidisciplinary collaborations among researchers in the new research field of human dynamics.

Ming

(Principal Investigator)