We are pleased to announce that Zachary Stine’s paper “Characterizing the language-production dynamics of social media users” has been published in the latest issue of Social Network Analysis and Mining, a multidisciplinary journal serving researchers and practitioners in academia and industry.    Abstract: In this paper, we propose a characterization of social media users based on language usage over time in order to make more rigorous the notions of organic and inorganic online behavior. This characterization describes the extent to which a user’s word usage within a particular time period subverts expectations based on preceding time periods. To do this, we adapt the use of anRead More →

Congratulations to Zachary Stine for being accepted to the 2019-2021 HASTAC Scholars Program. HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory) is a student-driven community of graduate and undergraduate students who are working at the intersection of technology and the arts, humanities and sciences.  Stine joined around 100 new scholars who have been accepted into the two-year cohort of the program. As a HASTAC Scholar, he will have the opportunity to meet and collaborate with others who share his research interests in religious studies and Natural Language Processing (NLP) while contributing to the program by blogging about his research.  During the two-year fellowship program,Read More →

Doctoral student Zachary Stine’s article “Characterizing the Language‑Production Dynamics of Social Media Users” was accepted for publication by Springer’s Social Network Analysis and Mining (SNAM) on September 28, 2019. The article, co-authored by Dr. Nitin Agarwal, was published online on October 3. Abstract:  In this paper, we propose a characterization of social media users based on language usage over time in order to make more rigorous the notions of organic and inorganic online behavior. This characterization describes the extent to which a user’s word usage within a particular time period subverts expectations based on preceding time periods. To do this, we adapt the use ofRead More →

On Friday, August 30th, doctoral student Zachary Stine presented research from an ongoing comparative study regarding online religious communities.  Stine and fellow researchers Dr. Nitin Agarwal and Dr. James Deitrick, used Reddit to try to understand the differences and similarities between the religious cultures Buddhism and Christianity by analyzing their discussion text for specific lexicons on a more structural level.   Stine described using topic modeling  in order to look at how both communities discuss certain topics. Buddhist and Christian communities were chosen simply because they had the largest amount of discussion text available. The researchers anticipated possible problems with this study, particularly the issue ofRead More →

On Thursday, April 18, students showcased their work at the Student Research and Creative Works Expo and EIT Open House. Guests viewed displays of capstone projects, theses, dissertations, and other research. COSMOS was well-presented by Kiran Kumar Bandeli, Nihal Hussain, Thomas Marcoux, Billy Spann, Richard Young, Michael DiCicco, Tuja Khaund, Karen Watts, Zachary Stine, and Adewale Obadimu who showcased their work. Our team members were presented with numerous awards at the 2019 Student Research and Creative Works Expo Awards Ceremony and the EIT Open House Awards Ceremony: Student Research and Creative Works Expo – First Place: Zachary Stine Student Research and Creative Works Expo – SecondRead More →

Doctoral student Zachary Stine presented research about machine learning and the legislative evolution of Ukraine during the EIT Colloquium on March 1.  Stine and co-author Dr. Nitin Agarwal explored methods on how to quantify change in Ukrainian legislation over time in order to provide a complementary view into the larger political dynamics of the country. In order for the audience to understand the legislative evolution of Ukraine, Stine provided an overview of the recent political events. Since its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine has gone through several political challenges.  The ongoing conflict with Russia became a global focal point when Russia annexedRead More →

Each Friday, the Donaghey College of Engineering and Information Technology Colloquium provides a forum for the presentation of research followed by a question and answer session with the guest speaker(s). This past Friday, COSMOS researchers Adewale Obadimu and Thomas Marcoux discussed ‘Social Media Analysis for Defeating Disinformation’. Doctoral candidate Adewale Obadimu introduced the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies to the audience in the room and online.  This particular Colloquium appeared to have had one of the highest online and in person attendances in sometime, with the interest of the topic driving participation. Adewale’s knowledge in machine learning and deep learning techniques hasRead More →

Moving from a humanities discipline as an undergraduate into a STEM field for graduate school was not exactly easy. I am hesitant to recommend this academic trajectory generally, but have found that my undergraduate training in the humanities has been a great source of help, even in a field that seems completely unrelated. When I first started college, I had no idea what subject I wanted to major in. I had just decided to switch from an out-of-state school, where I had been accepted into their music composition program, to a smaller in-state school after deciding against music composition. In my first semester, I tookRead More →

  This week cosmographer Zachary Stine presented his paper “Agent-based models for assessing social influence strategies” at the 9th International Conference on Complex Systems hosted by the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, MA. It is a unique interdisciplinary forum that unifies and bridges the traditional domains of science and a multitude of real-world systems. The conference was held from July 22 – 27 in Cambridge, MA. The paper has been published in the conference’s proceedings available here: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-96661-8_14 Stine, the lead author of the paper, is a Ph.D. student in Computer & Information science at UA Little Rock. Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor ofRead More →