Connecting the Dots – Page 4 – an IU Network Science Institute blog

News of Knight Foundation award and OSoMe expansion makes waves

Posted on August 15, 2019 by Stephanie Hernandez McGavin

From The Washington Post to Channels TV in Nigeria, people were eager to talk about how the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and schools like Indiana University will assess the impact of technology on democracy and improve media literacy.

A green, blue, and red visualization of the spread of information online.

The news of the Knight Foundation’s $50 million total commitment to IU and other institutions researching in this area quickly spread across major publications.

Along with the Post, the Miami Herald, which was once owned by John S. Knight, covered the story. The news also made its way into Inside Higher Ed and Yahoo! News. But the Knight Foundation news also went global with outlets like Mail Online UK, France 24, and others picking the story up.

And the $50 million commitment wasn’t the only story worth writing about. IU shared the exciting news that part of the Knight Foundation award would help fund the $6 million Observatory on Social Media (OSoMe) at IU, which is an expansion of the online OSoMe project.

The news of the research center—and its aim to study the spread of information online and improve media literacy—was covered by local and statewide outlets, including Inside INdiana Business and The Herald-Times.

A screenshot of a home page that has various colored boxes and has network background designs. It is the OSoMe online toolset. — OSoMe online tools.

James Shanahan, dean of The Media School, told The News-Sentinel in a story about the OSoMe update that “bringing journalists and students into contact with the best technology for assessing news legitimacy and accuracy will be an important step forward in the evolution of journalism in a new media environment.”

IUNI even wrote its own blog about the news, where we explored IUNI’s role in OSoMe and talked about what’s in store for our partnership, as we continue to collaborate on the new research center.

Who covered the story?

Here’s a list of publications that covered the Knight Foundation award or OSoMe expansion:

Filipi Silva Q&A: research scientist brings network visualization expertise to IUNI

Posted on July 31, 2019 by Stephanie Hernandez McGavin

Filipi N. Silva is the latest addition to the IUNI team, joining us last month as an assistant research scientist.

A photo of a young man with glasses. The man is Filipi Silva, a research scientist at IUNI. — Silva.

Silva first came to Indiana University Bloomington back in 2017, when he visited IU as a visiting scholar for a week. At the time, Silva was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of São Paulo, where he earned his Ph.D. in physics under the supervision of Luciano da F. Costa.

Later in 2017, he returned to IU to work as a visiting scholar with IU SICE for a year.

Now Silva has made his third trip back to IU, but this time he’s here to stay as an IUNI research scientist. Silva will contribute his network visualization expertise and knowledge of network science and science of science to IUNI’s research, as he works alongside IUNI Director and SICE Professor Santo Fortunato, as well as other IU faculty.

In this Q&A, Silva talks to us about what he’s working on at IUNI and why he loves the work he does.

Q: What brought you to Bloomington, Ind., from Brazil?

A green and blue image visualization of a high-dimensional space network where nodes are distributed over an n-dimensional space and connected if strongly correlated. — Silva’s visualization of a high-dimensional space network. Nodes are distributed over an n-dimensional space and connected if strongly correlated.

In Brazil we have a program in which the universities support students that want to collaborate with international institutions as a visiting scholar. I was applying with Diego R. Amancio (associate professor of computer science at the University of São Paulo), and we came here to Indiana University and had meetings with Fil (Filippo Menczer; IUB Informatics) and Santo. Their science of science research matched what we were doing, and it was really interesting and they were really receptive. Then a few months later, we decided to use our funding to come here. So I was here for a year as a visiting scholar.

Q: What did you work on as a visiting scholar at IU?

One thing I worked on with Fil at SICE was Scholarometer, which is a crowdsourced tool that provides new information on researchers using Google Scholar. The tool already existed but it broke, so we redesigned it and added other things. Another thing we worked on, where Santo and Alessandro (Alessandro Flammini; IUB Informatics) joined us, was understanding the dynamics of science. We were trying to visualize the evolution of science: You have fields that merge, you have fields that splits into others, you have fields that pop up from nothing, things like that. But we didn’t finish it before I left.

Q: So you’re working on that project now that you’re back? What else are you working on?

A visualization of chunks of green, orange, red, blue and purple data. Nodes represent Wikipedia articles. Pairs are connected if there is a reference between them. — Silva’s visualization of Wikipedia articles. Nodes represent articles and pairs are connected if there is a reference between them.

Yes, I’m still working on the project. It’s called “Identifying and predicting the birth of new disciplines.” But I’m also working on another project with Santo where we analyze how authors are cited. We have a new model in which we try to predict how authors overall will be cited over the following years, given the information from previous years. I also started another one with Santo in which we are trying to find a better way to define how strong a community is based on network perturbations.

I’m also working on some projects with my colleagues from the University of São Paulo that include the analysis of political data and understanding the effects of spatiality on diversity for certain network dynamics, such as opinion-forming models.

Q: A major area of your focus is science of science research—why SoS?

I really like science of science because it’s like using science to understand itself. Science of science can also help us understand where we are going, it can give us a view of the future, and an overview of the present. It can also be used to understand the past: How did things come together to make new technology or breakthroughs? So it’s very exciting work.

Q: Your work centers around network visualization. What led you to focus on this?

A blue and orange visualization of networks. Nodes represent parts of the lyrics of music; connections are drawn if lyrics share some level of textual similarity. — Silva’s visualization. Nodes represent parts of the lyrics of music; connections are drawn if lyrics share some level of textual similarity.

Well, let’s start with networks. I think networks are interesting because you can model many kinds of systems—I’ve worked with biologists, mathematicians, physicists, sociologists. I think network science is a very powerful way to model very real-world problems.

The second part is visualization in general. Visualization has a way for us humans to see what’s happening. We are very good at detecting patterns visually, so if you can detect patterns, even if there is complex data, you can better understand what’s happening.

If we merge networks and visualizations, you have a powerful tool to visualize anything. That’s the thing. Because networks can be applied to model many real systems and at the same time, visualization is a way to get that information more easily. It’s very powerful—you can see several aspects of real-world systems just by looking at the network visualizations. That’s what captivated me to work on this kind of thing.

Read some more of Silva’s recent work:

Representation of texts as complex networks: a mesoscopic approach by F. de Arruda, F. N. Silva, V. Q. Marinho, D. R. Amancio, L. da F. Costa
Patterns of authors contribution in scientific manuscripts by A. Corrêa Jr, F. N. Silva, L. da F. Costa, D. R. Amancio
Using network science and text analytics to produce surveys in a scientific topic by F. N. Silva, D. R. Amancio, M. Bardosova, L. da F. Costa, O. N. Oliveira Jr.
Visualizing Complex Networks (CDT-5) by F. N. Silva, L. da F. Costa
Topological characterization of world cities by S. Domingues, F. N. Silva, C. H. Comin, L. da F Costa

IUNI continues OSoMe collaboration with new research center

Posted on July 23, 2019 by Stephanie Hernandez McGavin

It has been a long and lively ride with the Observatory on Social Media (OSoMe). That’s why IUNI is so excited to remain a crucial collaborator in OSoMe’s expansion into a research center at Indiana University Bloomington.

OSoMe was awarded $6 million to create the research center, which expands on the current project and will study the dissemination of information and misinformation online, as well as educate journalists, students, and others.

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation will fund the center with a $3 million grant and IU will award an additional $3 million.

The research center, which is a collaboration between IUNI, the IU School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, and The Media School, will also play a role in a future IUB data journalism program.

Our OSoME to-do list not only includes helping launch a new tool called Botslayer, but also expanding and rebuilding the current OSoMe server base we host into a cloud-based infrastructure. We’re also hoping the new research center will help us expand OSoMe’s capabilities past Twitter data to include YouTube, Reddit, and other available datasets.

A photo of a man, Valentin Pentchev. — Pentchev.

Filippo Menczer (IUB Informatics) is a principal investigator for OSoMe and will serve as the center’s director. He has been using the data collected from these tools to study the spread of information and misinformation across social media and to educate others on the spread and its impact.

IUNI Director of Information Technology Valentin Pentchev and his team have been collaborating with the project since early 2015. Pentchev will serve as the research center’s director of information technology.

OSoMe & IUNI

Working alongside Menczer’s students and researchers, IUNI has contributed to the development of the tools in OSoMe’s portfolio and provided the infrastructure for data hosting, which is also aided by the Digital Science Center and its director, Geoffrey Fox.

IUNI began hosting OSoMe tools in 2016, soon after our senior systems developer, Chathuri Peli Kankanamalage, rebuilt the entire cluster from scratch due to a catastrophic hardware failure. Working closely with CNetS graduate students and postdocs, IUNI’s developers have been the driving force behind the core OSoMe tools, which include Trends, Networks, and Movies, as well as the Enhanced Data portal available only to researchers from IU.

This photo shows a network that consists of different colored nodes, all connected by long linkages. This image is an example of how IUNI's Ben Serrette was able to visualize social media information diffusion. — An example of Serrette’s network visualization.

For almost every OSoMe tool that now makes up the broader toolbox, Kankanamalage led the way in back-end development and our lead software engineer, Ben Serrette, helped build the front end. Serrette also created the visualizations that appear in tools like Hoaxy and designed the framework for the latest addition to the OSoMe toolbox: BotSlayer.

BotSlayer, funded by Craig Newmark Philanthropies, will help identify bot campaigns before they develop. IUNI Associate Full Stack Developer Marc McCarty and Menczer’s team have been hard at work developing BotSlayer since McCarty joined IUNI in March.

Former IUNI research scientist Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia (now at the University of South Florida) was also an important player in OSoMe since its inception.

After years of investing our time and expertise in OSoMe, the major investments from Knight Foundation and IU serve as a reminder to IUNI that a project we’ve helped develop is leading the way in studying the spread of information on social media and educating others on how to identify misinformation in an increasingly online world.

Read more about the new research center here. You can also play with OSoMe tools by visiting this site.

NSF supports new cycle of funding for IU’s role in Midwest Big Data Hub

Posted on June 20, 2019 by Stephanie Hernandez McGavin

BLOOMINGTON—The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced earlier this month it would award nearly $4 million of support for the Midwest Big Data Hub, one of four regional Big Data Hubs across the U.S.

This is NSF’s second round of funding for The Midwest Big Data Hub (MBDH), a network of cross-sector partnerships working to manage the end-to-end life cycle of big data assets.

The second MBDH phase includes funding that encourages creative answers to the region’s issues with an emphasis on seed funding for small start-up grants to pilot feasibility studies.

Indiana University Bloomington will receive about $340,000 for its part in the four-year award. MBDH partners, including IU, will initially receive half of the award, which will renew after two years upon proficient team performance.

IU is one of five partner universities that make up the hub, which is led by the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Using MBDH resources, each university will support projects and events that use big data to solve regional and national issues.

IU has already played a leading role in the previous round of NSF Big Data Hubs with the Neuroscience and Network Science Spokes.

A black-and-white photo of an adult man. The man is Franco Pestilli, the PI for the MBDH. — Franco Pestilli

The IU Principal Investigator is Franco Pestilli (Psychological and Brain Sciences). Co-Investigators are Inna Kouper (Informatics) and Valentin Pentchev (Indiana University Network Science Institute). Also in leadership is Craig Stewart (Pervasive Technology Institute).

Pestilli said IU is ready to lead the way in establishing “Smart, Connected, and Resilient Communities” across the Midwest, which will be IU’s contribution to MBDH efforts going forward.

He added that the hub is becoming a critical network for researchers who require access to tools for large-scale research.

“The Midwest Big Data Hub has the potential to become the critical transdisciplinary connection mechanism for scientists and engineers who are in need of access methods and data for large- and global-scale research,” Pestilli said.

IU’s hub contributions

Since MBDH’s inception in 2015, IU has been critical in advancing the mission of the hub. This includes Pestilli’s own brainlife.io project, which with seed funding from NSF’s Big Data program, received funding from NSF’s BRAIN initiative special program to create an open computing platform for neuroscience that allows researchers to publish, access, and analyze brain data and algorithms.

A photo of an adult man. The man is Valentin Pentchev, a Co-PI at the Midwest Big Data Hub. — Valentin Pentchev

MBDH also partnered with Beth Plale (IUB Informatics) on her project SEADTrain, which brought together publishing tools from the NSF-funded Sustainable Environments Actionable Data project and advancements in persistent ID technology to develop modules for workforce training in big data.

Plale, who is currently on loan at NSF as one of the program directors managing Big Data Hubs awards, served as IU’s Principal Investigator for MBDH from 2015 to 2017.

Plale was succeeded by Kouper in 2018. Kouper expanded the IU network of collaborators and, along with Pentchev of IUNI, led data science education and training initiatives.

The photo is of an adult woman. The woman is Inna Kouper, a Co-PI for the MBDH. — Inna Kouper

“During Phase 1 we established a diverse network of academic, industry, and public partners who are all vested in improving the life of the region through data-driven approaches,” Kouper said. “This provides a great foundation for Phase 2, where we can continue connecting people, communities, and organizations and aligning research interests with societal needs.”

Last year, MBDH partnered with the Collaborative Archive & Data Research Environment (CADRE) project, led by Jamie Wittenberg (IU Libraries).

The hub has also sponsored big data workshops at IU, including Data Quality in an Era of Big Data in 2016, the Big Data Neuroscience Workshop 2017, and a hackathon last year.

IU faculty find Mexican immigrants rely on networks for oral health issues, win award

Posted on May 28, 2019 by Stephanie Hernandez McGavin

A study by Indiana University that shows Mexican-American immigrants’ dependence on networks in the face of oral health issues won the 2019 Giddon Award for Distinguished Research.

The Giddon Award, presented by The International Association for Dental Research, recognizes a single research publication annually from the social and behavioral sciences that contributes to the field of dentistry.

The award-winning study, called “Talking about Teeth: Egocentric Networks and Oral Health Outcomes in a Mexican American Immigrant Community,” was led by Erin Pullen (IUNI), in collaboration with Brea Perry (IUB Sociology) and Gerardo Maupomé (IUPUI Fairbanks Public Health).

“Talking about Teeth” focused on oral health problems, including tooth loss and dental pain, among Mexican immigrants living in the United States.

Photo of IUNI researcher Erin Pullen — IUNI research scientist Erin Pullen.

Researchers found Mexican immigrants’ oral health networks, or the people they report talking to about their oral health concerns, are active components in the management and response to oral health problems in immigrants’ communities. This study suggests immigrants rely heavily on these networks to manage oral health problems, turning to their family members, friends, and others in their communities to seek advice, information, or emotional support.

The team used data from the TalaSurvey Study, for which Maupomé is the principal investigator, to examine these relationships.

This work provides rare insight into using network methods and social influence theories to investigate oral health, and the researchers will continue to advance the important line of work with Maupomé’s continued data collection.

Learn More: “Talking about Teeth: Egocentric Networks and Oral Health Outcomes in a Mexican American Immigrant Community” was recently published in the special Immigration and Health issue of the book series Advances in Medical Sociology. You can find it here.

IUNI Fellow Posting with IU Center for Neuroimaging and the Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center

Posted on April 19, 2019 by Ann McCranie

Post-doctoral Research Fellow in Brain Imaging Genomics of Alzheimer’s Disease
IU Center for Neuroimaging and the Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center
Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN USA

The Brain Imaging Genomics Laboratory of the Indiana University School of Medicine Center for Neuroimaging (CfN) and the Neuroimaging Core of the NIH-designated Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center (IADC), directed by Dr. Andrew Saykin, have openings for outstanding, highly motivated post-doctoral research associates with special interest in the areas of human brain imaging, cognitive neuroscience, and genomics/computational systems biology, to play a major role in state-of-the-science integrative studies of early stage Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders. Other collaborative research using similar approaches, within the center and beyond, focuses on cognitive and neural effects of breast cancer and cancer treatment, mild traumatic brain injury and sports concussion, and psychosis.

Special opportunities afforded by this fellowship include experience working directly with the Genetics Core of the NIA Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), the Neuroimaging Core (and other Cores) of the IADC, as well as with the IU Network Science Institute (IUNI), which is conducting pioneering integrative studies of the human connectome, social networks and systems biology of AD. Research-dedicated facilities in the IUSM Neuroscience Center include Siemens PRISMA 3T MRI, PET/CT, PET/MR, Radiochemistry Core and Neurovisualization Lab. A new preclinical Bruker BioSpec 9.4T/30 MRI with PET insert was also recently added for studies of model systems.

The CfN and IADC are highly collaborative transdisciplinary environments with PhD and
MD/PhD students in Medical Neuroscience, Medical and Molecular Genetics, Computer
Science and Bioinformatics. Along with Dr. Saykin (multi-modal imaging, genetics,
biomarkers and cognition), primary co-mentors on several NIH-funded projects include
Dr. Kwangsik Nho (bioinformatics, genomic and metabolomic analysis) and Dr.
Shannon Risacher (MRI and PET imaging; sensory changes in AD). Other closely
affiliated IU faculty include Drs. Yu-Chien Wu (MR physics), Taeho Jo (deep learning),
Jingwen Yan (bioinformatics and machine learning), Liana Apostolova (behavioral
neurology, early onset AD), Brenna McDonald (functional imaging and pediatric
neuropsychology), and at IU Bloomington, Drs. Olaf Sporns (network neuroscience,
connectomics), Santo Fortunato (network science, science of science, modularity),
Franco Pestilli (computational neuroscience, neuroinformatics) and Brea Perry (medical sociology and network science).

The overarching goals of this research program are 1) to achieve a better
understanding of the complex causes and mechanisms leading to AD, 2) to improve
early detection and longitudinal monitoring by combining genomics, fluid biomarkers
and advanced neuroimaging and 3) to identify novel targets for diagnostic use and
therapeutic intervention.

The fellow will have designated responsibility for specific projects and will contribute to
leading-edge team science initiatives. Fellows will be expected to take the lead on
preparing manuscripts for publication and appropriate grant proposals while
collaborating on other team efforts.

See full requirements and application details in the position posting.

Four new networks post-doctoral opportunities at IU: social network analysis, computational social science, and sociology

Posted on December 6, 2018 by Ann McCranie

Update : all of these positions have been filled.

Four postdoctoral fellowship positions are available at Indiana University, Bloomington in social network analysis, computational social science, and sociology. Candidates may apply for multiple positions.

See postings below or here:
https://indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/7162
https://indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/7158
https://indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/6810

1. POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS IN COMPUTATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE, INDIANA UNIVERSITY

The Department of Sociology, in partnership with the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering and the Network Science Institute at Indiana University, Bloomington is seeking multiple postdoctoral fellows to contribute to projects funded by the IU Grand Challenge: Responding to the Addictions Crisis. The fellowship will provide opportunities to conduct independent and collaborative research under the mentorship of Drs. Brea Perry (Sociology), Yong-Yeol (YY) Ahn (Informatics), Hank Green (IUNI), and Bernice Pescosolido (Sociology). The postdoctoral fellow will work with a highly interdisciplinary team on research addressing the opioid crisis, including access to treatment, community-based risk-factors, drug-seeking behavior, overdose, and stigma. The projects leverage a large-scale prescription and medical claims dataset, applying methods and theory from sociology, behavioral science, network science, econometrics, data science, and machine learning. The candidate must have strong computational skills and should be able to process and analyze large-scale datasets using tools from network science and/or machine learning. Expertise and experience in any of the relevant fields, including network science, machine learning, statistical modeling, medical sociology, and opioid addiction, is not strictly necessary, but will be highly valued. We strongly encourage applications from underrepresented minorities.

Terms of Agreement: This position will provide postdoctoral research training and support renewable for a second year upon satisfactory performance. The fellow will be expected to learn new research skills, develop independent avenues of research, and participate in interdisciplinary team science. The position begins on August 1, 2019 and ends on May 31, 2021.

Application Process: We invite applications from qualified candidates at the beginning of their academic careers who do not yet hold tenure-track academic positions. Applicants must have a Ph.D. in hand, or must have a letter from the chair of their dissertation committee confirming the timeline for completion of the Ph.D. and filing by June 30, 2019. Applicants should submit a cover letter, CV, research statement, writing sample, and three letters of reference. Applications should be submitted online at: http://indiana.peopleadmin.com. Queries should be sent to Dr. Brea Perry at blperry@indiana.edu. Applications received by January 15, 2018 at 11:59 pm EST will receive full consideration. Information about the Department of Sociology (https://www.indiana.edu/~soc/), the Indiana University Network Science Institute (https://iuni.iu.edu/), and the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering (https://www.sice.indiana.edu/) can be found online.

Indiana University is an equal employment and affirmative action employer and a provider of ADA services. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ethnicity, color, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, national origin, disability status or protected veteran status.

2. POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES, INDIANA UNIVERSITY

The Department of Sociology at Indiana University, Bloomington, in partnership with the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences (PBS), seeks a talented, highly motivated researcher with a background in medical sociology, social networks, social psychology, sociology of mental health, substance abuse, or quantitative methods. The postdoctoral fellow will work closely with Drs. Brea Perry (Sociology) and Anne Krendl (PBS) to contribute to research projects funded by the IU Grand Challenge: Responding to the Addictions Crisis. The postdoctoral fellow will work with an interdisciplinary team on research addressing the opioid crisis, including access to treatment, community-based risk-factors, drug-seeking behavior, and stigma. This fellowship will advance the career of an early stage researcher by providing opportunities to conduct independent and collaborative research, and by connecting with a mentor and other faculty in Sociology, PBS, and the Indiana University Network Science Institute (IUNI). Strong applicants will be motivated to conduct interdisciplinary research, and will demonstrate evidence of scholarly potential that will make them competitive for tenure-track appointments at a research university. Applicants belonging to underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged to apply.

Terms of Agreement: This position will provide postdoctoral research training and support (per NIH postdoctoral fellow salary rates) renewable for a second year upon satisfactory performance. The fellow will be expected to learn new research skills, develop independent avenues of research, and participate in interdisciplinary team science. The position begins on August 1, 2019 and ends on May 31, 2021.

Application Process: We invite applications from qualified candidates at the beginning of their academic careers who do not yet hold tenure-track academic positions. Applicants must have a Ph.D. in Sociology or a related field, or must have a letter from the chair of their dissertation committee confirming the timeline for completion of the Ph.D. and filing by June 30, 2019. Applicants should submit a cover letter, CV, research statement (3,000 words describing the dissertation project, work in progress, professional goals, and plans for publication), writing sample, and three letters of reference. Applications should be submitted online at: http://indiana.peopleadmin.com. Queries should be sent to Dr. Brea Perry at blperry@indiana.edu. Applications received by January 15, 2019 at 11:59 pm EST will receive full consideration. Information about the Department of Sociology (https://www.indiana.edu/~soc/), the Indiana University Network Science Institute (https://iuni.iu.edu/), and the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences (https://psych.indiana.edu/) can be found online.

3. POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP IN SOCIOLOGY, INDIANA UNIVERSITY

The Department of Sociology at Indiana University, Bloomington seeks a talented, highly motivated researcher with a background in medical sociology, social networks, social neuroscience, sociology of aging, and/or quantitative methods. The postdoctoral fellow will work closely with Brea Perry (Sociology) and conduct research related to funded projects, including the Social Networks and Alzheimer’s Disease Study. This project examines the role of personal social network dynamics and neuroimaging biomarkers in the etiology and progression of dementia in a cohort of older adults. This fellowship will advance the career of an early stage researcher by providing opportunities to conduct independent and collaborative research, and by connecting with a mentor and other faculty in Sociology, the Indiana University Network Science Institute (IUNI), and the Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center (IADC). Strong applicants will be motivated to conduct interdisciplinary research, and will demonstrate evidence of scholarly potential that will make them competitive for tenure-track appointments at a research university. Applicants belonging to underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged to apply.

Terms of Agreement: This position will provide postdoctoral research training and support (per NIH postdoctoral fellow salary rates) renewable for a second year upon satisfactory performance. The position also includes funds for travel to conferences for research dissemination and professional development. The fellow will be expected to learn new research skills, develop independent avenues of research, and participate in interdisciplinary team science. The position begins on August 1, 2019 and ends on May 31, 2021.

Application Process: We invite applications from qualified candidates at the beginning of their academic careers who do not yet hold tenure-track academic positions. Applicants must have a Ph.D. in Sociology or a related field, or must have a letter from the chair of their dissertation committee confirming the timeline for completion of the Ph.D. and filing by June 30, 2019. Applicants should submit a cover letter, CV, research statement (3,000 words describing the dissertation project, work in progress, professional goals, and plans for publication), writing sample, and three letters of reference. Applications should be submitted online at: http://indiana.peopleadmin.com. Queries should be sent to Dr. Brea Perry at blperry@indiana.edu. Applications received by December 15, 2018 at 11:59 pm EST will receive full consideration. Information about the the Department of Sociology (https://www.indiana.edu/~soc/), the Indiana University Network Science Institute (https://iuni.iu.edu/), and the Indiana Alzheimer Disease Center (https://medicine.iu.edu/research/centers-institutes/alzheimers/) can be found online.

New and Enhanced Social Media Analytics Resources at IU

Posted on December 7, 2017 by Ann McCranie

SAVE THE DATE! Please join us at the Social Science Research Commons (SSRC), Woodburn Hall 200, on Wednesday, January 17, 2018 at 4:00 p.m. for an information session of this new resource at our upcoming Open Science Meeting. Research scientist Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia will give a brief demonstration of how to use the tool, and an overview of the scientific applications of social media data. For more information see the official announcement.

Starting this November, a novel data resource is available to the research and academic community at Indiana University. IU researchers and students can now obtain access to the Twitter stream through a new data API, provided by the Observatory on Social Media (OSoMe), Indiana University’s warehouse for social media data.

The new API provides historical access to billions of tweets, with tens of millions of tweets sampled every day directly from the Twitter stream. On top of Twitter’s Enterprise streaming API endpoints, OSoMe’s new Enhanced Data API provides advanced filtering and analytics capabilities, which can be used to query the collection for fine-grained data collection, analysis, and presentation.

New data snapshots are added to the collection on a daily basis. Access to raw data, in JSON format, is provided, with no caps on the amount of data available for download. An interactive, Web-based query builder (Moe’s Tavern) is available for users who wish to get started immediately without having to learn how to use Hadoop or other big data engines.

This new data resource is available thanks to support from the Indiana University Network Science Institute (IUNI) and the Digital Science Center (DSC).

By virtue of its academic partnership with Twitter, free access to the data is provided for research and academic purposes only. All faculty, students, and staff at IU are eligible to apply for access to the data. For more information, please visit: http://iuni.iu.edu/resources/osome

Frequently Asked Questions

Background and how to apply

How do I access the data?

There is a form that any IU user can complete to request access to the dataset; requests are evaluated by IUNI’s data steward. The full access policy is available here, together with the link to the form: http://iuni.iu.edu/resources/osome#enhanced-data

Is this a free resource?

Yes, but it can be used only for academic and educational purposes.

I am an IU faculty/staff/student but I am not based on the Bloomington campus. May I still access this resource?

Yes, you may. People from all IU campuses are eligible to apply for access to the data.

Do I need to file for IRB review to use this resource?

It depends. As a general rule of thumb, access to the OSoMe Enhanced Data API does not absolve a user from any responsibilities required by the Office of Research Compliance.

Do I need to create a Twitter account to collect these data?

No, you do not have to create a Twitter account.

Am I going to breach the privacy of Twitter users by collecting these data?

No. Only data from the public Twitter stream can be accessed via the Enhanced Data API. In particular, we comply with the terms of the Twitter Developer Agreement and Policy, and honor the intent of Twitter users to remove from our database any tweet that they decide to delete. Please note that in order to apply for access to the Enhanced Data API you also have to agree and comply with those terms.

Data characteristics, sampling, tools and resources

Can I download the data? How large is the file?

The data are only available for download through the OSoMe Enhanced Access API. File size will depend on the type of query you run.

How much data is available?

The API will return tweets from the last 18 months. The collection is based on a 10% sample of all public tweets.

I need to access tweets that are older than 18 months. Can you please make older data available?

Unfortunately due to the limited size of our cluster we cannot maintain more than 18 months worth of data at any give time. If you are interested in supporting the expansion of the Observatory on Social Media please drop us a line and we would be happy to discuss it with you.

How is this different from the standard Twitter API?

The free Twitter Search API returns only results from the last seven days. The new Premium 30-day Search API extends to the last 30 days but is not free. OSoMe’s Enhanced Data API returns results from the last 18 months and is free to any IU students, faculty, or staff, and includes a range of advanced data aggregation and filtering methods.

Is the sample statistically valid?

The API takes advantage of Twitter’s Enterprise real-time sampling algorithms to collect a statistically valid sample of 10% of all public tweets. Please note that this is different from the free Twitter Streaming API, which has been shown to be affected by sampling biases.

I have used the OSoMe tools before. How does this differ the rest of the tools of the Observatory on Social Media?

To comply with Twitter’s Developer Agreement, the amount of data that you can export from our current public front end tools is capped. Moreover, you can only export numerical tweet and user IDs. This means that even when your data fits within the limit, you still have to use the Twitter API to collect each individual tweet. The new Enhanced Access API is not restricted by these limits, but is available only to IU users by virtue of an academic partnership between Indiana University and Twitter, inc.

I have heard that a lot of Twitter users are fake or automated. How can I tell which tweets are from human users?

Please check Botometer, our free social bot detection tool.

Can I visualize these data?

With the Observatory on Social Media you can visualize temporal trends, geographic distributions, and diffusion networks, and even make movies. For the full list of public tools, please see osome.iuni.iu.edu/tools

Can I read more about OSoMe? How can I acknowledge this resource in my work?

For more information and/or a suggested citation, please refer to our open-access publication on the Observatory on Social Media:

Davis CA, Ciampaglia GL, Aiello LM, Chung K, Conover MD, Ferrara E, Flammini A, Fox GC, Gao X, Gonçalves B, Grabowicz PA, Hong K, Hui P, McCaulay S, McKelvey K, Meiss MR, Patil S, Peli Kankanamalage C, Pentchev V, Qiu J, Ratkiewicz J, Rudnick A, Serrette B, Shiralkar P, Varol O, Weng L, Wu T, Younge AJ, Menczer F. (2016) OSoMe: the IUNI observatory on social media. PeerJ Computer Science 2:e87 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.87

If you use OSoMe and/or the new Enhanced Access API in your work, please acknowledge support from the Indiana University Network Science Institute. Suggested acknowledgement formula:

Access to Twitter data was obtained thanks to support from the Indiana University Network Science Institute through the Observatory on Social Media (osome.iuni.iu.edu), which is also supported by the Digital Science Center (dsc.sice.indiana.edu) and the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research (cnets.indiana.edu).

Welcome!

Posted on October 24, 2017 by Ann McCranie

This is the site of the new Indiana University Network Science Institute (IUNI) blog, Connecting the Dots. This is a group blog authored by IUNI-affiliated faculty and staff about networks research. IUNI, a cross-campus institute at IU, aims to improve the theories, methods, analytic tools, and practice of network science, and to foster collaborative, interdisciplinary network science approaches to understanding and improving the complex challenges of our world. We hope to be a catalytic force in this exciting environment of over 170 faculty members who engage in networks research.

If you are a faculty member or graduate student at IU and you are interested in participating in our new blog team, contact Ann McCranie at amccrani@indiana.edu. We welcome new regular contributors or occasional guest posts about networks issues, events, research, and news.