UALR

COSMOS joins program to fight the spread of foreign propaganda

University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor and social media infiltration expert Dr. Nitin Agarwal has been selected as a member of the U.S. State Department’s Tech Demo program to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation. Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science, leads COSMOS (Collaboratorium for Social Media and Behavioral Studies) at UA Little Rock. Agarwal’s team of researchers is one of 14 groups throughout the country that is participating in the program, which is organized by the Global Engagement Center that is charged with leading the U.S. government’s efforts to counter propaganda and disinformation from international terrorist organizations and foreign countries. During the next six months,Read More →

UA Little Rock students win Alabama hackathon with cryptocurrency prototype app

Two University of Arkansas at Little Rock students are looking to make a name for themselves in the world of hackathons. Michael DiCicco, sophomore information science major from Benton, and Karen Watts, senior information science major from Bryant, took home a big win as first place winners of CrimsonHacks, a Major League Hacking event held April 14-15 at the University of Alabama. DiCicco and Watts, working in conjunction with two students from the University of Alabama and Florida Institute of Technology, beat out 28 other teams for the top prize, a 3D printer, for their project, Tweety Wallet. They also won the Best Use of AmazonRead More →

Research explores how online narratives on refugees shift over time.

A group of researchers from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock are studying how the mass migration of refugees from Middle Eastern and North African countries into Europe has created a shift in the migrant narrative in online communication. The paper, “Analyzing Shift in Narratives Regarding Migrants in Europe via Blogosphere,” has been accepted in the Text2Story18 workshop at the 40th annual European Conference on Information Retrieval, a premier conference in information retrieval, to be held March 26-29 in Grenoble, France. The lead author of the paper, Muhammad Nihal Hussain, a fifth-year doctoral student in information science and a researcher at COSMOS (Collaboratorium forRead More →

Professors publish book studying online support communities for autism

A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor has co-authored a book with a UA Little Rock graduate analyzing how online communities and social media can provide stress relief for families and individuals with an autism spectrum disorder. Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science and director of COSMOS (Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies), co-authored the book with Dr. Amit Saha, assistant professor of anesthesiology at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. IGI Global, a leading international academic publisher, will launch the book, “Assessing Social Support and Stress in Autism-Focused Virtual Communities: Emerging Research and Opportunities,”Read More →

Team COSMOS wins Best Paper Award at conference

A group of University of Arkansas at Little Rock students has won the Best Paper Award from the International Academy, Research, and Industry Association (IARIA) for their paper studying blogs’ effect on the information flow of Venezuelan migration. Esther Mead, a doctoral student from Sheridan researching information science and information quality, was the lead author for the paper, “Assessing Situation Awareness through Blogosphere: A Case Study on Venezuelan Socio-Political Crisis and the Migrant Influx.” The paper explored how blogs disseminate information regarding social and political views and concerns of citizens within a community. As a case study, the researchers examined nearly 30,000 blog posts fromRead More →

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