Two papers got accepted for ACM WebSci’23
Two of our latest works got accepted for the 15th ACM Web Science Conference (WebSci’23)!
Web Science is an interdisciplinary field to study socio-technical systems, particularly on the web, and ACM WebSci is the premier conference for Web Science research.
“Political Honeymoon Effect on Social Media: Characterizing Social Media Reaction to the Changes of Prime Minister in Japan” by Kunihiro Miyazaki (The University of Tokyo, postdoctoral researcher at CNetS from March 1), Taichi Murayama (Osaka University), Akira Matsui (Yokohama National University), Masaru Nishikawa (Tsuda University), Takayuki Uchiba (Sugakubunka), Haewoon Kwak (Associate Professor of Informatics at IU Luddy), and Jisun An (Assistant Professor of Informatics at IU Luddy)
In this study, we examine how social media users respond to changes in political leadership to understand the honeymoon effect in politics better. In particular, we constructed a 15-year Twitter dataset on eight change timings of Japanese prime ministers consisting of 6.6M tweets and analyzed them in terms of sentiments, topics, and users.
“Wearing Masks Implies Refuting Trump?: Towards Target-specific User Stance Prediction across Events in COVID-19 and US Election 2020” by Hong Zhang (Singapore Management University), Haewoon Kwak (Associate Professor of Informatics at IU Luddy), Wei Gao (Singapore Management University), and Jisun An (Assistant Professor of Informatics at IU Luddy).
In this work, we look into an individual’s stance on three seemingly independent but related controversial topics: wearing masks, racial equality, and Donald Trump. These topics correspond to one’s behavior in three events that happened in 2020: mask adoption, racial unrest, and US Election. Our goal is to investigate how one’s behavior in a target event is associated with their behaviors in other related events, which we call connected behavior, beyond the context of COVID-19, and ultimately, predict one’s future behavior given their previous behaviors.
The conference will be Co-located with The Web Conference, Austin, Texas, USA, from April 30th to May 1st.
Fortunato elected Fellow of the American Physical Society
Santo Fortunato has been elected Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) for foundational contributions to the statistical physics of complex networks, and particularly to the study of community detection in networks and applications to social and scientific networks. The Fellowship is awarded annually to no more than one half of one percent of members of the APS for exceptional contributions to physics through research or publications, important applications of physics, leadership and physics education. Check the official press release of the school!
New postdoc position 2023
The Observatory on Social Media at Indiana University, Bloomington invites applications for a Postdoctoral Fellow position. The anticipated start date is January 1, 2023. The position is initially for 12 months and can be renewed for up to 24 additional months, depending on performance and funds availability. The Fellow will work with Filippo Menczer and collaborators at IU and other universities on sponsored research related to modeling the spread of harmful misinformation on social media.
Continue reading New postdoc position 2023New paper in Nature Physics
In 2002 the paper Community structure in social and biological networks, by Michelle Girvan and Mark E. J. Newman, marked the beginning of network community detection, possibly the most popular topic in network science, which tackles the problem of automatically discovering communities — groups of nodes of the network that are strongly connected or that share similar features or roles.
Twenty years later, it’s time to see how the field is doing. In the Comment 20 years of network community detection, just published in Nature Physics, Santo Fortunato and Mark Newman present a brief overview of this fascinating topic and highlight future directions.
Fortunato elected Fellow of the Network Science Society
Santo Fortunato has been elected Fellow of the Network Science Society (NSS) for seminal work in network community structure leading to advances in multiresolution approaches and validation, and for contributions to disseminating network science. The Fellowship is awarded annually to members of the community for their exceptional lifelong individual contributions to any area of network science research and to the community of network scientists, both locally and globally. The award has been announced at NetSci 2022, the flagship event of the NSS. Fortunato is the first member of Luddy to receive this prestigious recognition. Check the official press release of the school!
New network visualization tool maps information spread
Today the Observatory on Social Media and CNetS launched a revamped research tool to give journalists, other researchers, and the public a broad view of what’s happening on social media. The tool helps overcome some of the biggest challenges of interpreting information flow online, which is often difficult to understand because it’s so fast-paced and experienced from the perspective of an individual account’s newsfeed.
Continue reading New network visualization tool maps information spreadFortunato receives Zachary’s Karate Club Award
Santo Fortunato is the 21st recipient of the Zachary’s Karate Club Award, for being the first to mention the famous social network at NetSci 2022, during the satellite workshop Communities in Networks. Fortunato received the singular trophy from Jesus Arroyo Relion. He is the third member of CNetS to receive this award, after YY Ahn and Filippo Radicchi.
We’re moving and hiring!
We have two big announcements! First, CNetS (along with IUNI and OSoMe) is moving to the new Luddy Center for Artificial Intelligence. Second, we have a new tenure-track assistant professor position in Artificial Intelligence and Network Science. We welcome any candidates who study AI, complex systems, and network science (all broadly defined). Potential research areas include, but are not limited to, deep learning, graph neural networks, complex systems, complex networks, computational neuroscience, computational social science, social media analytics, agent-based models, and the impacts of AI and social media on society. We especially welcome applications from members of underrepresented groups in computing. More info and application here!
New grant on optimization problems in complex networks
The US Air Force Office of Scientific Research has awarded the grant Algorithmic and theoretical approaches to optimization problems on complex networks to CNetS faculty Filippo Radicchi. The project will study different classes of optimization problems (OPs) on complex networks, including optimal percolation, optimal sampling, optimal navigation, and optimal seeding. The research will address the practical, algorithmic and theoretical aspects of the OPs, focusing on the generalization of the problem settings to realistic scenarios, the development of numerical techniques for the solution of the OPs, and the establishment of analytical baselines for the objective assessment of the performance of the optimization algorithms.
The total budget of the award is 450,000 USD, the project’s duration is three years.