Discover Text Software Training: Unlock the Power of Text
Friday, February 4, 9-1
1 a.m.
Location: Frances Searle Building, Room 1.459 (SONIC Conference Room)
Discover Text Software Training: Unlock the Power of Text: A PhD-holding Political Scientist, Stu knows the importance of easy to use, powerful, text analytic software. As founder of a technology start up (http://texifter.com) and the QDAP labs (http://www.umass.edu/qdap), Stu’s work advances text mining and natural language processing research. His software trainings link these worlds via straightforward and easy to understand explanations of software features that can be tailored for all experience levels and project types.
Dr. Stuart W. Shulman is founder & CEO of Texifter, LLC and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the founding Director of the Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP) at the University of Pittsburgh and at UMass Amherst, as well as Associate Director of the National Center for Digital Government.
Stuart Shulman SONIC Speaker Series
Stuart Shulman presents “Measuring Validity in Annotation” Friday, February 4, 2011.Tools for reviewing, coding, and retrieving text found in qualitative data analysis packages carry with them no particular attributes for ensuring the reliability or validity of the recorded observations. Based on more than 10 years of multidisciplinary experience doing qualitative research, this presentation guides researchers through aspects of coder validity and reliability.
Dr. Stuart W. Shulman is founder & CEO of Texifter, LLC and an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the founding Director of the Qualitative Data Analysis Program (QDAP) at the University of Pittsburgh and at UMass Amherst, as well as Associate Director of the National Center for Digital Government.
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Measuring Validity in Annotation
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Local Model of Scientific Collaboration in Developing Nation
A region specific study, located in the Middle East, on the scientific collaboration of physicists, who are based in Iran, across multiple disciplines was recently done a few months ago. Analyzing the network’s basic properties, betweenness, diamater, etc., the local model is then compared to the global model of scientific collaboration to discover how a developing region such as the Middle East can contribute to global scientific process statistically. However, what becomes striking is how the local model unexpectedly differs from the global model. For example, despite the fact that the diameter of Iran’s physicists network is much smaller, resulting from a low diversity of information and disciplines, the physicists are reluctant to collaborate.
Collaboration between SONIC and CFES
On Monday, January 24, 2011, SONIC Lab Director Professor Noshir Contractor and Dr. Jan van Dijk of the Center for eGovernment (CFES), signed a memorandum of understanding.
The aim of the collaboration is to combine the research expertise of CFES with SONIC Lab’s in advancing our understanding the networked government. Examples of networks with the context of government:
- Networks of collaborating governmental agencies
- Communication networks between citizens, businesses, and governments
- Intermediary networks (roles of intermediaries in the stakeholder/government relationship)
- Open data networks
Understanding the complexities of the networked government is difficult. Research in this domain is scarce. The shortage of research is magnified by the rise of social media (web 2.0). We lack theories that explain and anticipate the transformation and impact of the networked government at the individual, organizational, and societal levels. The cooperation between CFES and SONIC will seek to advance our knowledge in this field.
The mission of the SONIC/CFES collaboration is the following:
The SONlC/CFES collaboration combines social network theories, methods, and tools with knowledge from the e-Government domain to understand and meet the needs of the networked government.
The research groups will exchange knowledge, collaborate on funding of projects for (internationally comparative) research, and coauthor publications.
The website for CFES: http://www.utwente.nl/ibr/cfes/
The website for SONIC: http://sonic.northwestern.edu/
The First Twitter Revolution?
Not so fast. The Internet can take some credit for toppling Tunisia’s government, but not all of it.
ICA and Sunbelt Conference paper acceptances
We have had papers accepted at the International Communication Association (ICA) and the INSNA Sunbelt conference for research related to team assembly and collaboration on Wikipedia articles about breaking news topics.
Keegan, B., Gergle, D., Contractor, N. (2011). “A Multi-theoretical, Multi-level Model of High Tempo Collaboration in an Online Community.” INSNA Sunbelt XXXI, Tampa, Florida.
Keegan, B. (2011). “Breaking News, Breaking Planes, and Breaking Hearts: Psycholinguistics and Sensemaking in Collaborative Accounts of Catastrophe.” International Communication Association, Boston, MA.
My ICA paper was nominated as a Best Student Paper for the Communication and Technology Division.
Gold farming conference acceptances
The VWO gold farming team has had several papers accepted for presentation at upcoming conferences.
Keegan, B., Ahmad, M., Williams, D., Srivastava, J., Contractor, N. (2011). “Mapping Gold Farming Back to Offline Clandestine Organizations: Methodological, Theoretical, and Ethical Challenges.” Game Behind the Video Game, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.
Keegan, B., Ahmad, M., Williams, D., Srivastava, J., Contractor, N. (2011). “Title: Using ERGMs to Map Online Clandestine Behavior to Offline Criminal Activity.” International Network of Social Network Analysis, Sunbelt XXXI, Tampa, FL.
See this and other VWO-related information at the project website.
Conference Acceptances Featuring CCAP work
International Sunbelt Social Network Conference (February 2011):
Young, L., & Contractor, N. (Feb 2011). Individual, tie, and network level predictors of access to social capital: Applying multi-level analysis to the study of ego-network capital. Paper presented at the 2011 International Sunbelt Social Network Conference, St. Pete Beach, FL.
International Communication Association Conference (May 2011):
Young, L., & Pieterson, W. (May 2011). Government to citizen communication in a networked world: †Integrating network and communication theories to inform strategic communication. Paper presented at the 2011 International Communication Association Conference, Boston, MA.
* Also to be presented at the ICA Strategic Communication Pre-Conference (May 26, 2011)
Encounter in Virtual Space
Yun Huang presented the paper “Encounter in Virtual Space” in INFORMS 2010 at Austin Texas on November 10th 2010. Here are the presentation slides.