78 results on '"Hale, Scott A."'
Search Results
2. Tackling racial bias in automated online hate detection: Towards fair and accurate detection of hateful users with geometric deep learning
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Ahmed, Zo, Vidgen, Bertie, and Hale, Scott A.
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- 2022
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3. Social media and early warning systems for natural disasters: A case study of Typhoon Etau in Japan
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Kitazawa, Katsushige and Hale, Scott A.
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- 2021
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4. Global connectivity, information diffusion, and the role of multilingual users in user-generated content platforms
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Hale, Scott A., Meyer, Eric T., and González-Bailón, Sandra
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006.3 ,Linguistics ,Computational Linguistics ,Natural Language Processing. ,Computer science (mathematics) ,Sociology ,Technology and Applied Sciences ,Internet research ,Information Diffusion ,Human-Computer Interaction ,Multilingualism - Abstract
Internet content and Internet users are becoming more linguistically diverse as more people speaking different languages come online and produce content on user-generated content platforms. Several platforms have emerged as truly global platforms with users speaking many different languages and coming from around the world. It is now possible to study human behavior on these platforms using the digital trace data the platforms make available about the content people are authoring. Network literature suggests that people cluster together by language, but also that there is a small average path length between any two people on most Internet platforms (including two speakers of different languages). If so, multilingual users may play critical roles as bridges or brokers on these platforms by connecting clusters of monolingual users together across languages. The large differences in the content available in different languages online underscores the importance of such roles. This thesis studies the roles of multilingual users and platform design on two large, user-generated content platforms: Wikipedia and Twitter. It finds that language has a strong role structuring each platform, that multilingual users do act as linguistic bridges subject to certain limitations, that the size of a language correlates with the roles its speakers play in cross-language connections, and that there is a correlation between activity and multilingualism. In contrast to the general understanding in linguistics of high levels of multilingualism offline, this thesis finds relatively low levels of multilingualism on Twitter (11%) and Wikipedia (15%). The findings have implications for both platform design and social network theory. The findings suggest design strategies to increase multilingualism online through the identification and promotion of multilingual starter tasks, the discovery of related other-language information, and the promotion of user choice in linguistic filtering. While weak-ties have received much attention in the social networks literature, cross-language ties are often not distinguished from same-language weak ties. This thesis finds that cross-language ties are similar to same-language weak ties in that both connect distant parts of the network, have limited bandwidth, and yet transfer a non-trivial amount of information when considered in aggregate. At the same time, cross-language ties are distinct from same-language weak ties for the purposes of information diffusion. In general cross-language ties are smaller in number than same-language ties, but each cross-language tie may convey more diverse information given the large differences in the content available in different languages and the relative ease with which a multilingual speaker may access content in multiple languages compared to a monolingual speaker.
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- 2014
5. Estimating Traffic Disruption Patterns with Volunteered Geographic Information
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Camargo, Chico Q., Bright, Jonathan, McNeill, Graham, Raman, Sridhar, and Hale, Scott A.
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- 2020
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6. Rapid rise and decay in petition signing
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Yasseri, Taha, Hale, Scott A, and Margetts, Helen Z
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- 2017
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7. How can we combat online misinformation? A systematic overview of current interventions and their efficacy
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Johansson, Pica, Enock, Florence, Hale, Scott, Vidgen, Bertie, Bereskin, Cassidy, Margetts, Helen, and Bright, Jonathan
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FOS: Computer and information sciences ,Computer Science - Computers and Society ,Computers and Society (cs.CY) - Abstract
The spread of misinformation is a pressing global problem that has elicited a range of responses from researchers, policymakers, civil society and industry. Over the past decade, these stakeholders have developed many interventions to tackle misinformation that vary across factors such as which effects of misinformation they hope to target, at what stage in the misinformation lifecycle they are aimed at, and who they are implemented by. These interventions also differ in how effective they are at reducing susceptibility to (and curbing the spread of) misinformation. In recent years, a vast amount of scholarly work on misinformation has become available, which extends across multiple disciplines and methodologies. It has become increasingly difficult to comprehensively map all of the available interventions, assess their efficacy, and understand the challenges, opportunities and tradeoffs associated with using them. Few papers have systematically assessed and compared the various interventions, which has led to a lack of understanding in civic and policymaking discourses. With this in mind, we develop a new hierarchical framework for understanding interventions against misinformation online. The framework comprises three key elements: Interventions that Prepare people to be less susceptible; Interventions that Curb the spread and effects of misinformation; and Interventions that Respond to misinformation. We outline how different interventions are thought to work, categorise them, and summarise the available evidence on their efficacy; offering researchers, policymakers and practitioners working to combat online misinformation both an analytical framework that they can use to understand and evaluate different interventions (and which could be extended to address new interventions that we do not describe here) and a summary of the range of interventions that have been proposed to date.
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- 2022
8. Effector CD8 T cells dedifferentiate into long-lived memory cells
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Youngblood, Ben, Hale, Scott J., Kissick, Haydn T., Ahn, Eunseon, Xu, Xiaojin, Wieland, Andreas, Araki, Koichi, West, Erin E., Ghoneim, Hazem E., Fan, Yiping, Dogra, Pranay, Davis, Carl W., Konieczny, Bogumila T., Antia, Rustom, Cheng, Xiaodong, and Ahmed, Rafi
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- 2017
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9. Fairness via AI: Bias Reduction in Medical Information
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Dori-Hacohen, Shiri, Montenegro, Roberto, Murai, Fabricio, Hale, Scott A., Sung, Keen, Blain, Michela, and Edwards-Johnson, Jennifer
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FOS: Computer and information sciences ,Computer Science - Computers and Society ,Computer Science - Machine Learning ,Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) ,Computer Science - Artificial Intelligence ,Computers and Society (cs.CY) ,Information Retrieval (cs.IR) ,Machine Learning (cs.LG) ,Computer Science - Information Retrieval - Abstract
Most Fairness in AI research focuses on exposing biases in AI systems. A broader lens on fairness reveals that AI can serve a greater aspiration: rooting out societal inequities from their source. Specifically, we focus on inequities in health information, and aim to reduce bias in that domain using AI. The AI algorithms under the hood of search engines and social media, many of which are based on recommender systems, have an outsized impact on the quality of medical and health information online. Therefore, embedding bias detection and reduction into these recommender systems serving up medical and health content online could have an outsized positive impact on patient outcomes and wellbeing. In this position paper, we offer the following contributions: (1) we propose a novel framework of Fairness via AI, inspired by insights from medical education, sociology and antiracism; (2) we define a new term, bisinformation, which is related to, but distinct from, misinformation, and encourage researchers to study it; (3) we propose using AI to study, detect and mitigate biased, harmful, and/or false health information that disproportionately hurts minority groups in society; and (4) we suggest several pillars and pose several open problems in order to seed inquiry in this new space. While part (3) of this work specifically focuses on the health domain, the fundamental computer science advances and contributions stemming from research efforts in bias reduction and Fairness via AI have broad implications in all areas of society., To appear in: The 4th FAccTRec Workshop on Responsible Recommendation at RecSys 2021
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- 2021
10. Tiplines to Combat Misinformation on Encrypted Platforms: A Case Study of the 2019 Indian Election on WhatsApp
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Kazemi, Ashkan, Garimella, Kiran, Shahi, Gautam Kishore, Gaffney, Devin, and Hale, Scott A.
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Social and Information Networks (cs.SI) ,FOS: Computer and information sciences ,Computer Science - Computation and Language ,Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (cs.CV) ,Computer Science - Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition ,Computer Science - Social and Information Networks ,Computation and Language (cs.CL) - Abstract
There is currently no easy way to fact-check content on WhatsApp and other end-to-end encrypted platforms at scale. In this paper, we analyze the usefulness of a crowd-sourced "tipline" through which users can submit content ("tips") that they want fact-checked. We compare the tips sent to a WhatsApp tipline run during the 2019 Indian national elections with the messages circulating in large, public groups on WhatsApp and other social media platforms during the same period. We find that tiplines are a very useful lens into WhatsApp conversations: a significant fraction of messages and images sent to the tipline match with the content being shared on public WhatsApp groups and other social media. Our analysis also shows that tiplines cover the most popular content well, and a majority of such content is often shared to the tipline before appearing in large, public WhatsApp groups. Overall, our findings suggest tiplines can be an effective source for discovering content to fact-check.
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- 2021
11. Semantic journeys: quantifying change in emoji meaning from 2012-2018
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Robertson, Alexander, Liza, Farhana Ferdousi, Nguyen, Dong, McGillivray, Barbara, Hale, Scott, Sub Natural Language Processing, and Natural Language Processing
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The semantics of emoji has, to date, been considered from a static perspective. We offer the first longitudinal study of how emoji semantics changes over time, applying techniques from computational linguistics to six years of Twitter data. We identify five patterns in emoji semantic development and find evidence that the less abstract an emoji is, the more likely it is to undergo semantic change. In addition, we analyse select emoji in more detail, examining the effect of seasonality and world events on emoji semantics. To aid future work on emoji and semantics, we make our data publicly available along with a web-based interface that anyone can use to explore semantic change in emoji.
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- 2021
12. Tackling Racial Bias in Automated Online Hate Detection: Towards Fair and Accurate Classification of Hateful Online Users Using Geometric Deep Learning
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Ahmed, Zo, Vidgen, Bertie, and Hale, Scott A.
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Social and Information Networks (cs.SI) ,FOS: Computer and information sciences ,Computer Science - Computers and Society ,Computer Science - Machine Learning ,Computers and Society (cs.CY) ,Computer Science - Social and Information Networks ,Machine Learning (cs.LG) - Abstract
Online hate is a growing concern on many social media platforms and other sites. To combat it, technology companies are increasingly identifying and sanctioning `hateful users' rather than simply moderating hateful content. Yet, most research in online hate detection to date has focused on hateful content. This paper examines how fairer and more accurate hateful user detection systems can be developed by incorporating social network information through geometric deep learning. Geometric deep learning dynamically learns information-rich network representations and can generalise to unseen nodes. This is essential for moving beyond manually engineered network features, which lack scalability and produce information-sparse network representations. This paper compares the accuracy of geometric deep learning with other techniques which either exclude network information or incorporate it through manual feature engineering (e.g., node2vec). It also evaluates the fairness of these techniques using the `predictive equality' criteria, comparing the false positive rates on a subset of 136 African-American users with 4836 other users. Geometric deep learning produces the most accurate and fairest classifier, with an AUC score of 90.8\% on the entire dataset and a false positive rate of zero among the African-American subset for the best performing model. This highlights the benefits of more effectively incorporating social network features in automated hateful user detection. Such an approach is also easily operationalized for real-world content moderation as it has an efficient and scalable design.
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- 2021
13. In Memory of Drew - The Sou'wester
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Hale, Scott
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News, opinion and commentary ,Sports and fitness - Abstract
Byline: Scott Hale content'> Tribute to Drew Rainer In Memory of Drew Scott Hale October 5, 2021 Reading the stories that have already been posted, it touches my heart to [...]
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- 2021
14. Tweeting for the Cause: Network analysis of UK petition sharing
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Cihon, Peter, Yasseri, Taha, Hale, Scott, and Margetts, Helen
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Social and Information Networks (cs.SI) ,FOS: Computer and information sciences ,Computer Science - Computers and Society ,Physics - Physics and Society ,Computers and Society (cs.CY) ,FOS: Physical sciences ,Computer Science - Social and Information Networks ,Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) - Abstract
Online government petitions represent a new data-rich mode of political participation. This work examines the thus far understudied dynamics of sharing petitions on social media in order to garner signatures and, ultimately, a government response. Using 20 months of Twitter data comprising over 1 million tweets linking to a petition, we perform analyses of networks constructed of petitions and supporters on Twitter, revealing implicit social dynamics therein. We find that Twitter users do not exclusively share petitions on one issue nor do they share exclusively popular petitions. Among the over 240,000 Twitter users, we find latent support groups, with the most central users primarily being politically active "average" individuals. Twitter as a platform for sharing government petitions, thus, appears to hold potential to foster the creation of and coordination among a new form of latent support interest groups online., Presented at IPP2016 Conference, Oxford, UK. http://blogs.oii.ox.ac.uk/ipp-conference/2016.html
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- 2021
15. Room to Glo: A Systematic Comparison of Semantic Change Detection Approaches with Word Embeddings
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Shoemark, Philippa, Liza, Farhana Ferdousi, Nguyen, Dong, Hale, Scott, McGillivray, Barbara, Sub Natural Language Processing, Natural Language Processing, Sub Natural Language Processing, and Natural Language Processing
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Series (mathematics) ,business.industry ,Computer science ,02 engineering and technology ,computer.software_genre ,Semantic change ,020204 information systems ,0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering ,020201 artificial intelligence & image processing ,Artificial intelligence ,business ,computer ,Word (computer architecture) ,Natural language processing - Abstract
Word embeddings are increasingly used for the automatic detection of semantic change; yet, a robust evaluation and systematic comparison of the choices involved has been lacking. We propose a new evaluation framework for semantic change detection and find that (i) using the whole time series is preferable over only comparing between the first and last time points; (ii) independently trained and aligned embeddings perform better than continuously trained embeddings for long time periods; and (iii) that the reference point for comparison matters. We also present an analysis of the changes detected on a large Twitter dataset spanning 5.5 years.
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- 2019
16. T-cell memory differentiation: insights from transcriptional signatures and epigenetics
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Youngblood, Ben, Hale, Scott J., and Ahmed, Rafi
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- 2013
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17. Distinct Memory CD4+ T Cells with Commitment to T Follicular Helper- and T Helper 1-Cell Lineages Are Generated after Acute Viral Infection
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Hale, Scott J., Youngblood, Ben, Latner, Donald R., Mohammed, Ata Ur Rasheed, Ye, Lilin, Akondy, Rama S., Wu, Tuoqi, Iyer, Smita S., and Ahmed, Rafi
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- 2013
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18. Social and Cognitive Aspects of the Vulnerability to Political Misinformation.
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Pantazi, Myrto, Hale, Scott, and Klein, Olivier
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BREXIT Referendum, 2016 , *MISINFORMATION , *PSYCHOLOGICAL research , *POLITICAL psychology , *POLITICAL scientists - Abstract
In the last few years, especially after the Brexit referendum and the 2016 U.S. elections, there has been a surge in academic interest for misinformation and disinformation. Social, cognitive, and political scientists' work on these phenomena has focused on two main aspects: Individuals' (and by extension societies') vulnerability to misinformation;Factors and interventions that can increase individuals' (and societies') resistance to misinformation. In this article, we offer a critical review of the psychological research pertaining to these two aspects. Drawing on this review, we highlight an emerging tension in the relevant literature. Indeed, the current state of the art of the political misinformation literature reflects the combined operation of two opposing psychological constructs: excess gullibility on the one hand and excess vigilance on the other. We argue that this conceptualization is important in both advancing theories of individuals' and societies' vulnerability to misinformation and in designing prospective research programs. We conclude with proposing what, in our view, are the most promising avenues for future research in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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- 2021
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19. T-cell receptor revision: friend or foe?
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Hale, Scott J. and Fink, Pamela J.
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- 2010
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20. Back to the thymus: peripheral T cells come home
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Hale, Scott J and Fink, Pamela J
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- 2009
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21. Diagnosing the performance of human mobility models at small spatial scales using volunteered geographic information
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Camargo, Chico Q., Bright, Jonathan, and Hale, Scott A.
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FOS: Computer and information sciences ,Physics - Physics and Society ,Computer Science - Computers and Society ,Computers and Society (cs.CY) ,FOS: Physical sciences ,Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) - Abstract
Accurate modelling of local population movement patterns is a core contemporary concern for urban policymakers, affecting both the short term deployment of public transport resources and the longer term planning of transport infrastructure. Yet, while macro-level population movement models (such as the gravity and radiation models) are well developed, micro-level alternatives are in much shorter supply, with most macro-models known to perform badly in smaller geographic confines. In this paper we take a first step to remedying this deficit, by leveraging two novel datasets to analyse where and why macro-level models of human mobility break down at small scales. In particular, we use an anonymised aggregate dataset from a major mobility app and combine this with freely available data from OpenStreetMap concerning land-use composition of different areas around the county of Oxfordshire in the United Kingdom. We show where different models fail, and make the case for a new modelling strategy which moves beyond rough heuristics such as distance and population size towards a detailed, granular understanding of the opportunities presented in different areas of the city.
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- 2019
22. Measuring the Volatility of the Political agenda in Public Opinion and News Media.
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Camargo, Chico Q, John, Peter, Margetts, Helen Z, and Hale, Scott A
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POLITICAL agenda ,PUBLIC opinion ,MASS media ,AGENDA setting theory (Communication) ,MASS media influence ,PRACTICAL politics - Abstract
Recent election surprises, regime changes, and political shocks indicate that political agendas have become more fast-moving and volatile. The ability to measure the complex dynamics of agenda change and capture the nature and extent of volatility in political systems is therefore more crucial than ever before. This study proposes a definition and operationalization of volatility that combines insights from political science, communications, information theory, and computational techniques. The proposed measures of fractionalization and agenda change encompass the shifting salience of issues in the agenda as a whole and allow the study of agendas across different domains. We evaluate these metrics and compare them to other measures such as issue-level survival rates and the Pedersen Index, which uses public-opinion poll data to measure public agendas, as well as traditional media content to measure media agendas in the UK and Germany. We show how these measures complement existing approaches and could be employed in future agenda-setting research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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- 2021
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23. Political Turbulence : How Social Media Shape Collective Action
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MARGETTS, HELEN, JOHN, PETER, HALE, SCOTT, YASSERI, TAHA, MARGETTS, HELEN, JOHN, PETER, HALE, SCOTT, and YASSERI, TAHA
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- 2015
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24. Does Campaigning on Social Media Make a Difference? Evidence From Candidate Use of Twitter During the 2015 and 2017 U.K. Elections.
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Bright, Jonathan, Hale, Scott, Ganesh, Bharath, Bulovsky, Andrew, Margetts, Helen, and Howard, Phil
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POLITICAL campaigns , *SOCIAL media , *POLITICAL candidates , *POLITICAL participation , *PUBLIC opinion ,BRITISH politics & government, 2007- - Abstract
Political campaigning on social media is a core feature of contemporary democracy. However, evidence of the effectiveness of this type of campaigning is thin. This study tests three theories linking social media to vote outcomes, using a novel 6,000 observation panel data set from two British elections. We find that Twitter-based campaigning does seem to help win votes. The impact of Twitter use is small, though comparable with campaign spending. Our data suggest that social media campaign effects are achieved through using Twitter as a broadcast mechanism. Despite much literature encouraging politicians to engage with social platforms in an interactive fashion, we find no evidence that this style of communication improves electoral outcomes. In light of our results, theories of how social media are changing processes of campaigns and elections are discussed and enhanced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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- 2020
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25. Live versus Archive: Comparing a Web Archive and to a Population of Webpages
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Hale, Scott A., Blank, Grant, Alexander, Victoria D., Brügger, Niels, and Schroeder, Ralph
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With its seemingly limitless scope, the World Wide Web promises enormous advantages, along with enormous problems, to researchers who seek to use it as a source of data. Websites change continually and a high level of flux makes it challenging to capture a snapshot of the web, or even a cross-section of a small subset of the web. A web archive, such as those at the Internet Archive, promises to store and deliver repeated cross-sections of the entire web, and it also offers the potential for longitudinal analysis. Whether this potential is realized depends on the extent to which the archive has truly captured the web. Therefore, a crucial question for Internet researchers is: ‘How good are the archival data?’\ud We ask if there are systematic biases in the Internet Archive, using a case study to address this question. Specifically, we are interested in whether biases exist in the British websites stored in the Internet Archive data. We find that the Internet Archive contains a surprisingly small subset, about 24%, of the webpages of the website that we use for our case study (the travel site, TripAdvisor). Furthermore, the subset of data we found in the Internet Archive appears to be biased and is not a random sample of the webpages on the site. The archived data we examine has a bias toward prominent webpages. This bias could create serious problems for research using archived websites.
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- 2017
26. Streamlining workflows: process automation can deliver dramatic efficiency gains
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Hale, Scott
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Belvac Production Machinery Inc. -- Production processes ,Belvac Production Machinery Inc. -- Technology application ,Technology application ,Business ,Engineering and manufacturing industries ,Metals, metalworking and machinery industries - Abstract
Automating repetitive or error-prone tasks is a good way to boost productivity. For example, one complex engineering process at Belvac Production Machinery Inc., Lynchburg, Va., once took a highly skilled [...]
- Published
- 2009
27. Measuring relative opinion from location-based social media: A case study of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
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Gong, Zhaoya, Cai, Tengteng, Thill, Jean-Claude, Hale, Scott, and Graham, Mark
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VISUAL analytics ,UNITED States presidential election, 2016 ,PUBLIC opinion polls ,MEDIA studies ,PUBLIC opinion ,SOCIAL media - Abstract
Social media has become an emerging alternative to opinion polls for public opinion collection, while it is still posing many challenges as a passive data source, such as structurelessness, quantifiability, and representativeness. Social media data with geotags provide new opportunities to unveil the geographic locations of users expressing their opinions. This paper aims to answer two questions: 1) whether quantifiable measurement of public opinion can be obtained from social media and 2) whether it can produce better or complementary measures compared to opinion polls. This research proposes a novel approach to measure the relative opinion of Twitter users towards public issues in order to accommodate more complex opinion structures and take advantage of the geography pertaining to the public issues. To ensure that this new measure is technically feasible, a modeling framework is developed including building a training dataset by adopting a state-of-the-art approach and devising a new deep learning method called Opinion-Oriented Word Embedding. With a case study of tweets on the 2016 U.S. presidential election, we demonstrate the predictive superiority of our relative opinion approach and we show how it can aid visual analytics and support opinion predictions. Although the relative opinion measure is proved to be more robust than polling, our study also suggests that the former can advantageously complement the latter in opinion prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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- 2020
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28. Digital traces of distinction? Popular orientation and user-engagement with status hierarchies in TripAdvisor reviews of cultural organizations.
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Alexander, Victoria D., Blank, Grant, and Hale, Scott A.
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POPULAR culture ,INTERNET & culture ,DIGITAL technology ,CULTURAL industries ,CULTURAL capital ,SOCIAL capital - Abstract
Cultural organizations are categorized by cultural products (high or popular culture) and by organizational form (nonprofit or commercial). In sociology, these classifications are understood predominantly through a Bourdieusian lens, which links cultural consumption to habitus and a class-based struggle for distinction. However, people’s engagement with institutionalized cultural classifications may be expressed differently on the Internet, where a culture of hierarchy-free equality is (sometimes) idealized. Using digital trace data from a representative sample of 280 user-generated reviews of four London cultural organizations, we find that reviewers are concerned with practical issues over cultural content, displaying a popular orientation to cultural consumption (an “audience-focus” or an “embodied” approach). A very small minority of reviewers claim status honor on a variety of bases, including symbolic mastery of traditional cultural capital. Overall, we find an online space in the cultural sphere in which cultural hierarchies are not relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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- 2018
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29. Investigating Political Participation and Social Information Using Big Data and a Natural Experiment
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Hale, Scott A., John, Peter, Margetts, Helen, and Yasseri, Taha
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Social and Information Networks (cs.SI) ,FOS: Computer and information sciences ,Physics - Physics and Society ,Computer Science - Computers and Society ,Physics - Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability ,Computers and Society (cs.CY) ,FOS: Physical sciences ,Computer Science - Social and Information Networks ,Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) ,Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability (physics.data-an) - Abstract
Social information is particularly prominent in digital settings where the design of platforms can more easily give real-time information about the behaviour of peers and reference groups and thereby stimulate political activity. Changes to these platforms can generate natural experiments allowing an assessment of the impact of changes in social information and design on participation. This paper investigates the impact of the introduction of trending information on the homepage of the UK government petitions platform. Using interrupted time series and a regression discontinuity design, we find that the introduction of the trending feature had no statistically significant effect on the overall number of signatures per day, but that the distribution of signatures across petitions changes: the most popular petitions gain even more signatures at the expense of those with less signatories. We find significant differences between petitions trending at different ranks, even after controlling for each petition's individual growth prior to trending. The findings suggest a non-negligible group of individuals visit the homepage of the site looking for petitions to sign and therefore see the list of trending petitions, and a significant proportion of this group responds to the social information that it provides. These findings contribute to our understanding of how social information, and the form in which it is presented, affects individual political behaviour in digital settings., Prepared for delivery at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 28-31, 2014
- Published
- 2014
30. How digital design shapes political participation: A natural experiment with social information.
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Hale, Scott A., John, Peter, Margetts, Helen, and Yasseri, Taha
- Subjects
- *
POLITICAL participation , *POLITICAL rights , *SOCIAL advocacy , *PUBLIC health , *SOCIAL networks - Abstract
Political behaviour increasingly takes place on digital platforms, where people are presented with a range of social information—real-time feedback about the behaviour of peers and reference groups—which can stimulate (or depress) participation. This social information is hypothesized to impact the distribution of political activity, stimulating participation in mobilizations that are increasing in popularity, and depressing participation in those that appear to be less popular, leading to a non-normal distribution. Changes to these platforms can generate natural experiments allowing for an estimate of the impact of different kinds of social information on participation. This paper tests the hypothesis that social information shapes the distribution of political mobilizations by examining the introduction of trending information to the homepage of the UK government petition platform. The introduction of the trending feature did not increase the overall number of signatures per day, but the distribution of signatures across petitions changed significantly—the most popular petitions gained more signatures at the expense of those with fewer signatories. We further find significant differences between petitions trending at different ranks on the homepage. This evidence suggests that the ubiquity of trending information on digital platforms is introducing instability into political markets, as has been shown for cultural markets. As well as highlighting the importance of digital design in shaping political behaviour, the findings suggest that a non-negligible group of individuals visit the homepage of the site looking for petitions to sign, without having decided the issues they wish to support in advance. These ‘aimless petitioners’ are particularly susceptible to changes in social information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2018
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31. TripAdvisor Reviews of London Museums: A New Approach to Understanding Visitors.
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Alexander, Victoria D., Blank, Grant, and Hale, Scott A.
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USER-generated content ,MUSEUMS & technology ,DIGITAL technology ,MUSEUM visitors ,ONLINE comments ,MUSEUM management - Abstract
The digital revolution has affected museums in many ways, both directly and indirectly. A major external change is the rise of user‐written reviews; that is, reviews written by museum visitors and posted on the Internet. User‐generated reviews pose challenges to museums, as they are publicly available and largely outside the control of museums. This article discusses research on reviews of accredited museums in London. Our data set consists of all reviews written about 88 London museums that were posted on TripAdvisor during 2014, a total of 22,940 reviews. Using a technique called topic modelling, we describe 19 themes in reviewers' stories of their visits. We find that museum visitors pay attention to the ancillary aspects of their visit: queues, cost, food service, toilets, and activities for children. They make fewer comments on the cultural side of the museum experience. However, these cultural aspects do matter and are associated with positive reviews. We argue that reviewers consider museums as part of a wider leisure sector. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of our study for museum management and assess the usefulness of user‐generated content as a source of data on museum visitors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2018
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32. The October 2014 United States Treasury bond flash crash and the contributory effect of mini flash crashes.
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Levine, Zachary S., Hale, Scott A., and Floridi, Luciano
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- *
GOVERNMENT securities , *BOND market , *STOCK exchanges , *FINANCIAL stress - Abstract
We investigate the causal uncertainty surrounding the flash crash in the U.S. Treasury bond market on October 15, 2014, and the unresolved concern that no clear link has been identified between the start of the flash crash at 9:33 and the opening of the U.S. equity market at 9:30. We consider the contributory effect of mini flash crashes in equity markets, and find that the number of equity mini flash crashes in the three-minute window between market open and the Treasury Flash Crash was 2.6 times larger than the number experienced in any other three-minute window in the prior ten weekdays. We argue that (a) this statistically significant finding suggests that mini flash crashes in equity markets both predicted and contributed to the October 2014 U.S. Treasury Bond Flash Crash, and (b) mini-flash crashes are important phenomena with negative externalities that deserve much greater scholarly attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2017
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33. Estimating local commuting patterns from geolocated Twitter data.
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McNeill, Graham, Bright, Jonathan, and Hale, Scott
- Subjects
SOCIAL media & society ,WIRELESS geolocation systems ,DATA analysis ,AUTOMOTIVE transportation - Abstract
The emergence of large stores of transactional data generated by increasing use of digital devices presents a huge opportunity for policymakers to improve their knowledge of the local environment and thus make more informed and better decisions. A research frontier is hence emerging which involves exploring the type of measures that can be drawn from data stores such as mobile phone logs, Internet searches and contributions to social media platforms and the extent to which these measures are accurate reflections of the wider population. This paper contributes to this research frontier, by exploring the extent to which local commuting patterns can be estimated from data drawn from Twitter. It makes three contributions in particular. First, it shows that heuristics applied to geolocated Twitter data offer a good proxy for local commuting patterns; one which outperforms the current best method for estimating these patterns (the radiation model). This finding is of particular significance because we make use of relatively coarse geolocation data (at the city level) and use simple heuristics based on frequency counts. Second, it investigates sources of error in the proxy measure, showing that the model performs better on short trips with higher volumes of commuters; it also looks at demographic biases but finds that, surprisingly, measurements are not significantly affected by the fact that the demographic makeup of Twitter users differs significantly from the population as a whole. Finally, it looks at potential ways of going beyond simple frequency heuristics by incorporating temporal information into models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2017
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
34. Generating Tile Maps.
- Author
-
McNeill, Graham and Hale, Scott A.
- Subjects
MAPS ,CARTOGRAPHY ,TIME series analysis ,ALGORITHMS ,PROTOTYPES - Abstract
Tile maps are an important tool in thematic cartography with distinct qualities (and limitations) that distinguish them from better-known techniques such as choropleths, cartograms and symbol maps. Specifically, tile maps display geographic regions as a grid of identical tiles so large regions do not dominate the viewer's attention and small regions are easily seen. Furthermore, complex data such as time series can be shown on each tile in a consistent format, and the grid layout facilitates comparisons across tiles. Whilst a small number of handcrafted tile maps have become popular, the time-consuming process of creating new tile maps limits their wider use. To address this issue, we present an algorithm that generates a tile map of the specified type (e.g. square, hexagon, triangle) from raw shape data. Since the 'best' tile map depends on the specific geography visualized and the task to be performed, the algorithm generates and ranks multiple tile maps and allows the user to choose the most appropriate. The approach is demonstrated on a range of examples using a prototype browser-based application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2017
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
35. Coming to Light: Contemporary Translations of the Native Literatures of North America Brian Swann
- Author
-
James, Meredith and Hale, Scott
- Published
- 1997
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
36. Government on the web: about
- Author
-
Dunleavy, Patrick, Margetts, Helen, Escher, Tobias, Hale, Scott, Tinkler, Jane, and Bastow, Simon
- Subjects
ComputerSystemsOrganization_MISCELLANEOUS ,JN101 Great Britain - Abstract
This site is dedicated to improving knowledge and understanding of digital era government. We are an academic team researching all aspects of citizens, governments and information technologies, particularly the Internet. Our work informs both academic and policy audiences with an aim to help shape policy design.
- Published
- 1999
37. Understanding Editing Behaviors in Multilingual Wikipedia.
- Author
-
Kim, Suin, Park, Sungjoon, Hale, Scott A., Kim, Sooyoung, Byun, Jeongmin, and Oh, Alice H.
- Subjects
MULTILINGUAL websites ,EDITORS ,LANGUAGE ability ,SECOND language acquisition - Abstract
Multilingualism is common offline, but we have a more limited understanding of the ways multilingualism is displayed online and the roles that multilinguals play in the spread of content between speakers of different languages. We take a computational approach to studying multilingualism using one of the largest user-generated content platforms, Wikipedia. We study multilingualism by collecting and analyzing a large dataset of the content written by multilingual editors of the English, German, and Spanish editions of Wikipedia. This dataset contains over two million paragraphs edited by over 15,000 multilingual users from July 8 to August 9, 2013. We analyze these multilingual editors in terms of their engagement, interests, and language proficiency in their primary and non-primary (secondary) languages and find that the English edition of Wikipedia displays different dynamics from the Spanish and German editions. Users primarily editing the Spanish and German editions make more complex edits than users who edit these editions as a second language. In contrast, users editing the English edition as a second language make edits that are just as complex as the edits by users who primarily edit the English edition. In this way, English serves a special role bringing together content written by multilinguals from many language editions. Nonetheless, language remains a formidable hurdle to the spread of content: we find evidence for a complexity barrier whereby editors are less likely to edit complex content in a second language. In addition, we find that multilinguals are less engaged and show lower levels of language proficiency in their second languages. We also examine the topical interests of multilingual editors and find that there is no significant difference between primary and non-primary editors in each language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2016
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
38. Leadership without Leaders? Starters and Followers in Online Collective Action.
- Author
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Margetts, Helen Z., John, Peter, Hale, Scott A., and Reissfelder, Stéphane
- Subjects
COLLECTIVE action ,INTERNET & politics ,LEADERSHIP ,PERSONALITY studies ,ACTIVISM ,MASS mobilization ,COLLECTIVE behavior ,PSYCHOLOGY ,COMPUTER network resources - Abstract
The internet has been ascribed a prominent role in collective action, particularly with widespread use of social media. But most mobilisations fail. We investigate the characteristics of those few mobilisations that succeed and hypothesise that the presence of 'starters' with low thresholds for joining will determine whether a mobilisation achieves success, as suggested by threshold models. We use experimental data from public good games to identify personality types associated with willingness to start in collective action. We find a significant association between both extraversion and internal locus of control, and willingness to start, while agreeableness is associated with a tendency to follow. Rounds without at least a minimum level of extraversion among the participants are unlikely to be funded, providing some support for the hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2015
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
39. Where in the World Are You? Geolocation and Language Identification in Twitter.
- Author
-
Graham, Mark, Hale, Scott A., and Gaffney, Devin
- Subjects
- *
LINGUISTICS , *METADATA , *LANGUAGE & languages , *ACCEPTABILITY (Linguistics) - Abstract
The movements of ideas and content between locations and languages are unquestionably crucial concerns to researchers of the information age, and Twitter has emerged as a central, global platform on which hundreds of millions of people share knowledge and information. A variety of research has attempted to harvest locational and linguistic metadata from tweets to understand important questions related to the 300 million tweets that flow through the platform each day. Much of this work is carried out with only limited understandings of how best to work with the spatial and linguistic contexts in which the information was produced, however. Furthermore, standard, well-accepted practices have yet to emerge. As such, this article studies the reliability of key methods used to determine language and location of content in Twitter. It compares three automated language identification packages to Twitter's user interface language setting and to a human coding of languages to identify common sources of disagreement. The article also demonstrates that in many cases user-entered profile locations differ from the physical locations from which users are actually tweeting. As such, these open-ended, user-generated profile locations cannot be used as useful proxies for the physical locations from which information is published to Twitter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2014
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
40. Iterative 3-D Pose Correction and Content-Based Image Retrieval for Dorsal Fin Recognition.
- Author
-
Campilho, Aurélio, Kamel, Mohamed, Stewman, John, Debure, Kelly, Hale, Scott, and Russell, Adam
- Abstract
Contour or boundary descriptors may be used in content-based image retrieval to effectively identify appropriate images when image content consists primarily of a single object of interest. The registration of object contours for the purposes of comparison is complicated when the objects of interest are characterized by open contours and when reliable feature points for contour alignment are absent. We present an application that employs an iterative approach to the alignment of open contours for the purposes of image retrieval and demonstrate its success in identifying individual bottlenose dolphins from the profiles of their dorsal fins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2006
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
41. Net Increase? Cross-Lingual Linking in the Blogosphere.
- Author
-
Hale, Scott A.
- Subjects
BLOGS ,HYPERLINKS ,HAITI Earthquake, Haiti, 2010 ,ENGLISH language ,SPANISH language ,JAPANESE language ,TRANSLATIONS - Abstract
This research analyzes linguistic barriers and cross-lingual interaction through link analysis of more than 100,000 blogs discussing the 2010 Haitian earthquake in English, Spanish, and Japanese. In addition, cross-lingual hyperlinks are qualitatively coded. This study finds English-language blogs are significantly less likely to link cross-lingually than Spanish or Japanese blogs. However, bloggers' awareness of foreign language content increases over time. Personal blogs contain most cross-lingual links, and these links point to (primarily English-language) media. Finally, most cross-lingual links in the dataset signal a citation or reference relationship while a smaller number of cross-lingual links signal a translation. Although most bloggers link to other blogs in the same language, the dataset reveals a surprising level of human translation in the blogosphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2012
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
42. MODELING THE TEMPERATURE EFFECT ON THE FLOW BEHAVIOR OF SWEET POTATO PUREE1.
- Author
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KYEREME, MICHAEL, HALE, SCOTT A., and FARKAS, BRIAN E.
- Published
- 1999
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
43. Detection of discoloration in thermally processed blue crab meat.
- Author
-
Requena, Dina D, Hale, Scott A, Green, David P, McClure, W Fred, and Farkas, Brian E
- Published
- 1999
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
44. The Door-in-the-Face Influence Strategy: A Random-Effects Meta-Analytic Review.
- Author
-
O'KEEFE, DANIEL J. and HALE, SCOTT L.
- Subjects
DOOR-in-the-face technique (Social psychology) ,META-analysis ,COMMUNICATION strategies ,COMMUNICATION methodology ,INTERPERSONAL communication ,SOCIAL influence - Abstract
A random-effects meta-analysis of research concerning the door-in-the-face (DITF) influence strategy provides evidence supporting more confident generalizations about the role of several moderator variables than that provided by previous reviews. Variations in the identity of the requester, the identity of the beneficiary, the prosocialness of the requests, the medium of communication, and the time interval between requests all appear to influence the size of DITF effects; variations in concession size do not. DITF effects are small in absolute terms (with an overall mean r of .10), but not remarkably small in the context of other effect sizes concerning social influence. However, there is substantial variability in DITF effects, even under optimal conditions. The review's findings are not easily reconciled with most proposed explanations of DITF effects, but appear consistent with a guilt-based account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 1998
45. Comparison of Four Trawls for Sampling Juvenile Shad.
- Author
-
MICHALETZ, PAUL, BOXRUCKER, JEFF, HALE, SCOTT, and JACKSON, JAMES R.
- Published
- 1995
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
46. 3D Models Help in Truck Manufacturing.
- Author
-
Hale, Scott
- Subjects
- *
COMPUTER software - Abstract
The article reviews the 3D virtual modeling software Autodesk Inventor from Avatech Solutions Inc.
- Published
- 2008
47. Using immersive virtual reality to improve the beliefs and intentions of influenza vaccine avoidant 18-to-49-year-olds: Considerations, effects, and lessons learned.
- Author
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Nowak, Glen J., Evans, Nathaniel J., Wojdynski, Bartosz W., Ahn, Sun Joo (Grace), Len-Rios, Maria E., Carera, Karen, Hale, Scott, and McFalls, Deborah
- Subjects
- *
INFLUENZA vaccines , *VIRTUAL reality , *HERD immunity , *BELIEF & doubt , *INTENTION , *VACCINATION - Abstract
• Study focused on influenza vaccination avoidant 18-49-year-old adults. • Experiment examined whether supplemental flu vaccine education materials helped. • Immersive VR showed promise when it generated a sense of presence. • Presence was associated with positive outcomes on beliefs and intentions. • VR holds promise for communicating key immunization concepts. Only one-third of adults 18–49 years old in the United States receive a recommended annual influenza vaccination. This study examined whether supplementing vaccine information statements (VIS) with an immersive virtual reality (VR), short video or electronic pamphlet story designed to convey the community immunity benefits of influenza vaccination would improve influenza vaccine avoidant participants' influenza-related perceptions as well as their influenza vaccination-related beliefs, confidence and intentions. A one-way between-subjects experimental design compared the effects of adding a supplemental education experience prior to VIS exposure with flu vaccine avoidant 18-to-49-year-olds. The 171 participants recruited from the community were randomly assigned to one of three modality treatment conditions [VR, video, or e-pamphlet (i.e., story board presented via electronic tablet)] or a VIS-only control condition. Compared to the modalities, the VR intervention created a stronger perception of presence (i.e., feeling of "being there" in the story), which, in turn, increased participants' concern about transmitting influenza to others and raised vaccination intention. Increased concern about transmitting influenza to others was associated with positive effects on influenza vaccination-related beliefs, including confidence that one's flu vaccination would protect others. Neither the e-pamphlet nor the video intervention were able to elicit a sense of presence nor were they able to improve the impact of the VIS on the outcome measures. Immersive VR has much potential to increase understanding of key immunization concepts, such as community immunity, through creative executions that increase a sense of presence. Given the need to increase influenza vaccination uptake among 18-to-49-year-olds, and the projected growth in VR accessibility and use, additional applications and assessments related to vaccination communication and education are needed and warranted. By increasing the ability to convey key vaccine and immunization concepts, immersive VR could help address vaccination hesitancy and acceptance challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2020
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
48. World literature in review: Native American.
- Author
-
James, Meredith and Hale, Scott
- Subjects
- COMING to Light (Book)
- Abstract
Reviews the book `Coming to Light: Contemporary Translations of the Native Literatures of North America,' edited by Brian Swann.
- Published
- 1997
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
49. Diagnosing the performance of human mobility models at small spatial scales using volunteered geographical information.
- Author
-
Camargo CQ, Bright J, and Hale SA
- Abstract
Accurate modelling of local population movement patterns is a core, contemporary concern for urban policymakers, affecting both the short-term deployment of public transport resources and the longer-term planning of transport infrastructure. Yet, while macro-level population movement models (such as the gravity and radiation models) are well developed, micro-level alternatives are in much shorter supply, with most macro-models known to perform poorly at smaller geographical scales. In this paper, we take a first step to remedy this deficit, by leveraging two novel datasets to analyse where and why macro-level models of human mobility break down. We show how freely available data from OpenStreetMap concerning land use composition of different areas around the county of Oxfordshire in the UK can be used to diagnose mobility models and understand the types of trips they over- and underestimate when compared with empirical volumes derived from aggregated, anonymous smartphone location data. We argue for new modelling strategies that move beyond rough heuristics such as distance and population towards a detailed, granular understanding of the opportunities presented in different regions., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interests., (© 2019 The Authors.)
- Published
- 2019
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
50. Detection and quantification of species authenticity and adulteration in crabmeat using visible and near-infrared spectroscopy.
- Author
-
Gayo J and Hale SA
- Subjects
- Animals, Brachyura classification, Brachyura chemistry, Food Contamination analysis, Seafood analysis, Spectroscopy, Near-Infrared, Spectrum Analysis
- Abstract
Seafood processing often removes morphological properties of seafood species that enable the consumer to distinguish one type of organism from another. For this reason, species substitution is the most common form of economic adulteration in the seafood industry. Visible and near-infrared spectroscopy (Vis/NIR) has been used to detect and quantify species authenticity and adulteration in crabmeat samples. Atlantic blue crabmeat was adulterated with blue swimmer crabmeat in 10% increments. Water absorption bands dominated the main features in the crabmeat spectra, with a decrease in sample absorbance with increasing adulteration percentage. Several data pretreatments, i.e., moving average, combing, first and second derivatives, and multiplicative scatter correction, in addition to the raw data, were investigated for prediction and quantitative data analysis using partial least-squares. In addition, quantitative analysis was done using the full spectrum and a sequential approach in which 50 wavelengths were added sequentially to determine a new model and find an optimal solution. The results suggest that Vis/NIR spectroscopy is a suitable technology that can be applied to detect and quantify species authenticity and adulteration in crabmeat.
- Published
- 2007
- Full Text
- View/download PDF
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