iSchool Innovations - Research Magazine

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innovatiONS R E S E A R C H 2 0 1 7 | THE SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES AT SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

Learning How ICTs Build Life-Transition Resilience Problem Solving Made More Creative: TRACE A Centralized Resource For Young Innovators Faculty and Graduate Student Accolades And Achievements


Elizabeth D. Liddy Dean and Trustee Professor Kevin Crowston Associate Dean for Research and Distinguished Professor of Information Science

EDITORIAL STAFF J.D. Ross Editor Diane Stirling Associate Editor

PHOTOGRAPHY J.D. Ross Steve Sartori David Broda iStock/Getty Images

ILLUSTRATIONS Data Visualization: Jeffery Hemsley, Ph.D. Illustrations: Joseph M. Murphy, J.M. Murphy Illustration iStock/Getty Images

GRAPHIC DESIGN Colleen Kiefer Kiefer Creative

innovatiONS iSchool Innovations is published annually. This issue contains highlights of the endeavors of faculty and students over the 2017 calendar year. For more information about iSchool research visit: ischool.syr.edu/research or contact Kevin Crowston, associate dean for research, at 315-443-1676 or crowston@syr.edu. For general information about the iSchool contact J.D. Ross, communications director, at 315-443-3094 or rossjd@syr.edu.


Welcome! DEAR FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES,

Welcome to this inaugural issue of Innovations, the Syracuse University School of Information Studies (iSchool) research magazine. We’re proud to report on the activities of our research centers and the significant achievements of our faculty and students. Our scholars work in an array of domains: data science; computational social science; human-centered computing; information systems, policies and services; librarianship; learning, training and organizations; technology security; digital technologies and privacy; telecommunications; network systems. Much of our research occurs collaboratively within our school, with other Syracuse University schools and faculty and with researchers at other institutions across the nation and the world. Much of it is inter­ disciplinary, a facet that reflects the dimensions of today’s information field. Quite naturally for us, our doctoral students have central roles in these projects and occasionally, our graduate and undergraduate students also become active research project team members. We hope you enjoy reading about the discoveries, achievements and honors of our work in 2017. In a few months, we’ll send another issue that focuses on our 2018 research efforts. In the meantime, please feel comfortable getting in touch.We’d love your feedback and we’re happy to respond to your inquiries anytime.

Elizabeth D. Liddy Dean and Trustee Professor liddy@syr.edu

Kevin Crowston Associate Dean for Research Distinguished Professor of Information Science crowston@syr.edu

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insiDE THis WELCOME . . . TO THE INAUGURAL INNOVATIONS!  1 FEATURES IMLS Project Expands Research Into Children’s Innovation Processes  4 New Tool Simulates Drone Traffic  8 Drone Privacy Study Earns NYS Revitalization Grant  9 4

Computational Journalism/Sentiment Analysis ‘Illuminates’ Political Messaging  12 Enhancing Reasoning, Creative Thinking Using Crowdsourcing, Nudging, Structured Techniques  14 How ICTs Can Ease Difficult Life Transitions  16 Finding Funding and Collaborators: ‘EILEEN’  18 Smart Energy Project Wins NSF Smart and Connected Communities Grant  22 Inclusive Tech Privacy Project Advances With NSF Career Award  24

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LAB REPORTS CENT: Center for Emerging Network Technologies  6 CCDS: Center for Computational and Data Sciences  10 BITS: Examining How People Use Tech and Communication  16 METADATA: Analytics and Modeling  17 SMART GRID: Project Center  20 SALT: Supporting the Use of Tech  23

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R E S E A R C H 2 0 1 7 | THE SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES AT SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

GRANTS SUMMARY New Awards  26 Incremental Awards  28

VISITING SCHOLARS Appreciating Scholar Guests  30 Research Speakers and Visitors  49

FACULTY AND STUDENT NOTES Leadership Awards and Accolades  32 Books, Book Chapters, Journal Articles  34 Keynotes, Panels and Workshops  36 Presentations, Papers and Posters  38

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Selected Media Mentions  42 Ph.D. Placements  44 Doctoral Research and Recognitions  45 Post-Doctoral Papers and Honors  47 Master’s, Undergraduate Honors  48

On the Inside Cover:

“Occupy and the 99%,” the image on the inside front cover, is a data visualization made in the R programming language. It illustrates Twitter data collected during the fall of 2011. The spheres represent people and the lines are cases where one person retweeted another. The same data source and R method were used to develop another illustration, used on the back cover, titled “Protest Information Flow: Visualizing Occupy.” Both visualizations were created by iSchool Assistant Professor Jeff Hemsley.

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IMLS-Funded Project Investigates Elements Leading to Children’s Innovation Processes The Innovation Destination Site Offers Resources for Young Innovators and Adult Mentors

W Marilyn Plavocos Arnone

Ruth Small

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hat prompts young children to innovate? Where do they find the tools they use to develop innovations? How do they seek mentors to encourage their innovation paths? Those questions and others about the inno­vation process in young children are being examined in the “Young Innovators” project and the resulting insights are being gathered into a website for librarians and other adult mentors of child innovators. “The Innovation Destination” site is the work of researchers Dr. Ruth Small and Dr. Marilyn Plavocos Arnone, whose efforts were funded by a prestigious $249,495 National Leadership Grant for Libraries from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Dr. Small has served as the Laura J. & L. Douglas Meredith Professor at the iSchool; director of the Center for Digital Literacy and of the Center’s Project ENABLE; and co-editor of School Library Research. She retired from her iSchool faculty position in the fall of 2017, but continues work as a research professor. Dr. Arnone is an iSchool research associate professor and asso­ciate professor of practice. The pair have worked together on groundbreaking children’s information and library projects several times and have previously received IMLS research funding. The concept for the project came about through Dr. Small’s work over the past decade and its applications with young innovator organizations and the role of librarians in supporting innovation and entrepreneurship in children and teens, she says. The pair have worked with experts in mentoring and supporting young innovators on this project. Their collaborations have included prominent national and state organizations and community facilities By Kids For Kids; the Connecticut Invention Convention; New York On Tech; Time2Invent; OCLC’s Webjunction and the Center for Mentoring Excellence.

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NEW LIBRARY RESOURCES The grant has permitted Small (as principal inves­ tigator) and Arnone (as co-principal investigator) to develop, produce and distribute information designed to spur creative thinking among students in grades 4 through 8 and provide librarians and other adults who guide young innovators with new types of library resources. They also wanted to enable librarians to understand of the importance of motivating and supporting student inquiry and innovation by creating innovation spaces within their libraries and by demonstrating knowledge and skills for being innovation mentors. They worked with close to 100 school librarians throughout the project.

“While innovation and entrepreneurship are certainly about creativity and problemsolving, what really excites me is learning more about the curiosity triggers among young inventors and entrepreneurs.” — MARILYN PLAVOCOS ARNONE

The training and new resources comprise the content for The Innovation Destination website, which uses an iterative design approach to its learning games, bibliographies and research articles. Designed for use by elementary and middle school librarians, teachers, parents and students, the site’s centerpiece is KidsClips. The clips are video interviews with successful young innovators offering their insights into the innovation process. At the same time, the materials present the child interviewees as role models for other young innovator-hopefuls. Dr. Arnone observes, “While innovation and entrepreneurship are certainly about creativity and problem-solving, what really excites me is learning more about the curiosity triggers among young inventors and entrepreneurs.” Prior research


has shown that curiosity questions seem to diminish as children reach the third-grade level, Dr. Arnone notes, saying her hope is that their work “provides a resource that also helps librarians stimulate the curiosity that can lead to inventiveness.”

MENTORS ARE CRUCIAL Their interviews with 50 children conducted throughout 2017 underscored a prior finding regarding the importance of mentors on children’s innovation processes, according to Dr. Small. “The element that’s of critical importance in children’s innovation is having an adult mentor in the lives of these imaginative, creative kids,” she notes. Those mentors know when and how to encourage without taking over and they effectively provide guided learning as opposed to teaching processes— methods that have big differences, she says. “The mentors also understand that mentoring is a process that begins with the establishment of mutual trust and requires specific knowledge, skills and attitudes from both mentor and mentee,” she adds. Additional questions about the innovation process have been raised in the course of their research, according to Dr. Small. “We are also looking at the innovation process itself to try to

understand common issues that arise (particularly often inevitable failure), ways of handling those issues, how kids go from curiosity to deep interest to passion and what seem to be critical components of the process.”

INNOVATION RESOURCES The ultimate goal of their efforts is creation of a broad network of innovative and freely available resources for use by school librarians who want to transform their libraries into innovation spaces, create innovation-related programs and activities that stimulate curiosity and inquiry and inspire and support students’ innovative activities, the pair report. Additional facets include providing online training to school librarians on how to effectively mentor young innovators in their schools and creating a comprehensive and searchable database of resources for teachers, librarians, parents and the kids themselves, according to Dr. Small. With additional funding, the project will continue into additional phases, including interviews with children in the kindergarten to thirdgrade age levels. Ultimately, Drs. Small and Arnone hope to follow kids from kindergarten to grade 12 “so that we get a broader glimpse of how this process evolves.” n   THE iSCHOOL @ SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

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LAB REPORT

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ENT is an initiative to research how interoper­­able systems and technologies are converging to provide solutions for industries and economies. The Center’s goal is to create a culture of knowledge management through experiential learning. Through interdisciplinary and applied research, CENT teams focus on the management and use of networks and communication and relevant public policy and industrial organization issues. The space provides a platform for faculty research on digital transformation and networking; a hub for experiential learning for graduate and advanced undergraduate student teams; and a mutually beneficial learning interface between the networking technology industries and the iSchool.

Associate Professor Carlos Caicedo in the CENT lab.

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PROJECTS INCLUDE: Internet of Things (IoT) Testbed CENT’s IoT testbed setup started in the Fall 2017 semester to provide infrastructure for experiential learning and research for IoT. The IoT management and data processing cluster was set up as an aggregate set of containerized applications for data analysis, storage and visualization. Its principal components include: l Several connectivity options for sensor and systems (wired Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and LoRaWAN) l Machine-to-machine communication with a focus on MQTT l A storage and processing cluster leveraging ThingsBoard l An ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana). The connectivity infrastructure includes a dedicated IoT SSID available in Hinds Hall, two LoRaWAN gateways, one located in Hinds Hall and the other on top of a 20-story building in down­ town Syracuse, and a core network in the CENT lab on the second floor of Hinds Hall. The LoRaWAN infrastructure covers all of metro Syracuse and most of the Syracuse University campus. The testbed working group is presently working on detailed coverage mapping and initial sensor deployment. The LoRaWAN gateways are part of “The Things Network” (https://www. thethingsnetwork.org/) and provide capabilities to capture data from sensors across Syracuse University, the city of Syracuse and beyond, given the deployment of Things Network gateways in many U.S. and international cities. Several Raspberry Pi 3 nodes with a customized sensor board are being deployed in the School’s Hinds Hall building, enabling the building to act as a “living lab” for IoT projects. The data captured by these nodes goes to the data processing cluster. Beyond its use in IoT experiments, the data can be used in several courses at the iSchool related to data analytics and visualization.


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The flexibility built into the cluster allows CENT faculty and students to deploy and test different tools to interact with the captured data. They also can explore the use of different cloud-based services to facilitate interactions with the sensing nodes and the analysis of the data.

Speak EZ (Unified Communications) The Speak EZ project is an outgrowth of CENT’s earlier commitments to conduct research involving unified communications systems, such as technologies that integrate voice, data and video in communication systems and Voice-Over-Internet Protocol services. The project incorporated student work developing a mobile system to assist one of Syracuse’s largest refugee communities. The Burmese Karen were identified in community needs studies as being able to benefit greatly from a “one-stop” resource and service center to help them communicate and obtain information for successful resettlement. Given their situation of limited English literacy and difficulties accessing transportation, the idea of using a nearly ubiquitous technology—a mobile phone—seemed the best way to help. Using an open source interactive voice response (IVR) platform, a system called “SpeakEZ” was launched with a 2015 award of a $35,000 Media Innovation grant from the Knight Foundation Prototype Fund. The funds were awarded to Associate Professor Murali Venkatesh as lead investigator. Based in the CENT lab, a team of students took on the task, first conducting field assessments and by 2016, creating a prototype. They moved the project forward with large-scale field tests and refinements early in 2017 and later in the year, conducted a fullfledged system deployment. The project concluded in 2017.

Spectrum Consumption Model Builder and Analysis Tool (SCMBAT) The Spectrum Consumption Model Builder and Analysis Tool (SCMBAT) facilitates the construction of Spectrum Consumption Models (SCMs) and the analysis of compatibility (i.e. non-interference) between transmitters and receivers for which an SCM describes their boundaries of spectrum use. Overall, SCMBAT aims to incentivize the use of SCMs, uncover the potential benefits of their use, collect feedback for their improvement and contribute to the development of spectrum sharing techniques. The structure of SCMs and the mechanisms to determine non-interfering use of spectrum when devices express their spectrum

use boundaries via SCMs are defined in the IEEE Standard 1900.5.2, elaborated by the IEEE 1900.5 Working Group on Policy Language and Architectures for Managing Cognitive Radio for Dynamic Spectrum Access Applications. CENT Director Carlos Caicedo has been a member of the group since 2012 and was elected as the secretary for the working group developing the IEEE standards in 2017. The initial version of this open-source tool was released in 2016. In 2017, CENT researchers worked on continued development of standards, working to release and updated version of the tool and final version of the standard in December.

Multi-Agent Simulation for UAV Air Traffic Planning and Management This project is building a simulator environment to study UAV air traffic planning and communication resource management. The simulator provides several options to define parameters such as: launch rate of UAVs, locations of UAV launch and landing sites, type of missions to be carried out by UAVs (such as package delivery and monitoring), configurable no-fly zones, terrain/landscape information, communication channel characteristics and communication infrastructure characteristics. Development of the tool involves faculty from the iSchool and students and faculty from the College of Engineering and Computer Science working along with a major company of the air traffic management sector. (See article on page 8.)

Network Security As an expansion of its original mission, CENT hosts a network security testbed for students interested in working in that field. The testbed also provides significant support for the School’s cybersecurity student competition team, which uses the facility for training and learning exercises. The students conduct experiments demonstrating information security vulnerabilities and they test and evaluate IT security products and technologies. Research efforts enhance the evolving information security curriculum of the iSchool. Past research areas have included: Managing a network using SNMPv3, implementation of a WAN emulator, configuration of a SIP Trunk, IPv6 security vulnerabilities, wireless communications – 802.11n AP performance, network lab virtualization, Internet governance issues. CENT’s director is Carlos Caicedo, associate professor.

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Caicedo and College of Engineering Team Develop Tool To Simulate Commercial Drone Traffic and Applications

I Carlos Caicedo

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n the fall of 2017, Associate Professor Carlos Caicedo began work as part of a team building a simulator environment to study air traffic planning and communication resource management for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) systems (“drones”). The cross-disciplinary team has since developed a successful prototype of the simulator, and based on that early success, the project is moving into a second phase. Caicedo, with two faculty members from the School of Engineering and Computer Science at Syracuse University and two doctoral engineering students, first built a prototype agent-based mode­ ling and simulation tool for simulating air traffic capacity scenarios for commercial UAV operations. The platform permitted them to simulate the effects of drone air traffic capacity, and then to test and assess the impact on communication network resources required for effective operation of the drones within that airspace. Their work examined the changing interrelationship of communication between the UAV devices flying within a particular area and the drone operations. In particular, they have assessed what communication resources are necessary to successfully support effective communication between the UAVs and their operators during various situations and levels of drone traffic. The simulator offers a range of configurable parameters that define the different scenarios to be studied, such as the launch rate of UAVs, locations of UAV launch and landing sites, type of missions to be carried out by UAVs (such as package delivery and monitoring), configurable no-fly zones, terrain/ landscape information, communication channel characteristics and communication infrastructure characteristics. THE iSCHOOL @ SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

“CENT and CASE in particular have had extensive experience con­duc­ting joint academia/industry projects. We hope our collaboration with Thales continues to be successful and attracts other opportunities.” — CARLOS CAICEDO, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

“The use of Agent-Based Modeling and Sim­u­lation techniques makes this simulator very adaptable and scalable to a range of air traffic and communication network scenarios that can span a city, county, state or larger regions with hundreds to thousands of concurrent air missions,” according to Caicedo. The project is being jointly funded by Syracuse University’s Center for Advanced Systems and Engineering (CASE), a NYSTAR-designated Center for Advanced Technology in complex information systems, and the French multinational company Thales. “CENT and CASE in particular, have had extensive experience con­duc­ting joint academia/industry projects. We hope our collaboration with Thales continues to be successful and attracts other opportunities,” Caicedo says. The team hopes to continue a two-year research and development collaboration to explore the use of AI (artificial intelligence) and Deep Neural Network techniques in UAV traffic planning and to address additional wireless communication network resource management and design issues, according to Caicedo. n


Drone Privacy Study Earns NYS Revitalization Initiative Grant Project Explores UAS Use in Building Energy Audits

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rone operation research involving privacy issues being conducted by an iSchool assistant professor in collaboration with faculty at two other Syracuse University schools won New York State and Syracuse University Office of Research funding in 2017. Yang Wang, along with Tarek Rakha, assistant professor from the School of Architecture and Senem Velipasalar, associate professor from the College of Engineering and Computer Science, were awarded $43,162 to explore the use of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) in energy audits of buildings. The project is titled, “Heat Mapping Drones: Building Envelope Energy Performance and Privacy Diagnostics Using Unmanned Aerial Systems.” It was one of six drone-study projects across the University to receive funds from the initial phase of New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Upstate Revitalization Initiative, with additional monies awarded from the Syracuse University Office of Research. The study involved aspects of promoting safe and secure unmanned systems operating in urban areas, including regions with closely spaced highrise buildings. To conduct the research, the team employed a UAS platform equipped with thermal

cameras designed to conduct rapid building envelope performance diagnostics and aerial assessment mapping of building energy. The purpose of the mapping was to spot areas of heat loss in buildings in order to improve the design of energy-saving systems and contribute to overall building performance. Traditionally, says Wang, such energy audits have been conducted by human inspectors and sometimes would be time consuming and error prone. Substituting drones for the same work involves privacy concerns, since UAS-mounted cameras have the ability to capture images of and identify humans. Wang’s research component involved conducting a privacy impact assessment of the UAS system used in the project and work toward finding ways to enhance its privacy awareness and protection. His past research efforts have been related to privacy issues or unmanned aerial systems in general, and so the project represented “an exciting application of UAS technology to the energy and sustainability domain,” he says. Wang and his associates at Syracuse University and in the iSchool’s SALT (Social Computing Systems Lab) have published three research papers from their involvement in drone and privacy studies: l “Flying Eyes and Hidden Controllers: A Qualitative Study of People’s Privacy Perceptions of Civilian Drones in the U.S.,” published in proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies l “Free to Fly in Public Spaces: Drone Controllers Privacy Perceptions and Practices,” published in the proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (CHI 2017) l “Mechanisms for Drones: Perceptions of Drone Controllers and Bystanders,” published in proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (CHI 2017). n

Yang Wang

Tarek Rakha

Senem Velipasalar

Tarek Rakha (second from left) and students fly a drone equipped with thermal imaging equipment around the Center of Excellence building in downtown Syracuse.

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LAB REPORT

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dvancing important and practical research in the social sciences using advanced computational approaches is the focus of The Center for Computational and Data Sciences (CCDS). The Center builds on the iSchool’s historic strengths in human language technologies (such as natural language processing and machine learning) and a new emphasis on data science research. Researchers are doing work that advances the science of data collection, retrieval, curation, analysis and archiving. They are applying those techniques to provide needed expertise and systems to solve pressing social problems or needs by collecting large-scale behavioral, interactional and other data, then using data science processes and human language technologies to create solutions.

PROJECTS INCLUDE: TRACE The Trackable Reasoning and Analysis for Collaboration and Evaluation (TRACE) Project aims to improve reasoning and intelligence analysis by developing a web-based application to leverage the use of structured techniques, crowdsourcing and smart nudging to enhance analysts’ problem-solving abilities and foster creative thinking. The project is supported by a contract from the CREATE (Crowdsourcing Evidence, Reasoning, Argumentation, Thinking and Evaluation) Program of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), an arm of the Office for the Director of National Intelligence, which heads the nation’s intelligence services. Its first-phase funding is worth $5,215, 441. Led by Professor Jennifer Stromer-Galley, the initiative utilizes the expertise of a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from Syracuse University, the University of Arizona, Colorado State University, and SRC, Inc., a Syracuse-based company. (See article on page 14.) traceproject.syr.edu

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Illuminating 2016 This computational journalism project was begun as a way to empower journalists covering the 2016 presidential campaign by providing a highly defined look at how candidates are expressing their views, platforms and election events via social media. The deep data-dive analysis of Twitter and Facebook posts by candidates has increased transparency and accountability of the campaigns, and has provided a way to tag the types, topics and strategies of candidate messages, as well as the public’s conversation. The project’s goal is to provide a useable yet comprehensive summary of the content of candidates’ social media posts, well beyond simply counting likes or retweets, especially due to the volume of information available. Illuminating 2016 was designed to enable political journalists an insightful yet accessible summation of the important political conversation online. (See article on page 12.) illuminating.ischool.syr.edu

Citation Opinion Retrieval and Analysis (CORA) The CORA Project aims to build an automated tool to plug into a full-text bibliographic database, extract citation statements toward a cited article, separate substantial citations from perfunctory ones and categorize substantial citation opinions by their purposes, subject aspects, tones, and holders and targets of the opinions. The tool’s goal is to save librarians and researchers significant amounts of time finding the most useful comments from a large number of citations. It also is designed to provide a new, qualitative approach for assessing research impact and can help monitor the quality of scientific publications by facilitating easier identification of citation bias and inaccurate citations from the re-organized citations. CORA will also contribute a new approach for assessing research impact and help monitor the quality of scientific publications. ccds.ischool.syr.edu/projects/cora/


Inclusive Privacy Project

The CCDS Team

This project aims to provide people with disabilities, particularly those with visual impairments, better privacy tools when working with computers. To better understand the privacy challenges people with visual impairments face, this project first studies their computer use plus known technology privacy concerns. Researchers then work with people with visual impairments to generate, test and improve a number of design ideas that might address those challenges and concerns. They also work to generalize the studies and designs to other populations, including older adults who might have different privacy expectations than younger people as well as people with cognitive impairments.

Director: Professor Jennifer Stromer-Galley Also involved are: l Nancy McCracken, research associate professor l Jeff Hemsley, assistant professor l Yang Wang, assistant professor l Jeffrey Saltz, associate professor l Lu Xiao, associate professor l Bei Yu, associate professor l Daniel Acuna, assistant professor l Yatish Hegde, research staff member l Kevin Crowston, associate dean for research l Patricia Rossini, postdoctoral researcher l Brian Semaan, assistant professor l Jennifer Grygiel, assistant professor of communications at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University l Rebekah Tromble, assistant professor in the Institute of Political Science at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Students include: Sikana Tanupabrungsun, Feifei Zhang, Brian Dobreski, Yingya Li, Mahboobeh Harandi, Jerry Robinson, Sam Jackson, Olga Boichak and Karen Hawkinson.

inclusiveprivacy.org/

Diffusion on Niche Social Media Sites Research This project studies the shift in information diffusion from large social media sites to niche social media sites. While information diffusion studies have mainly focused on sites like YouTube and Twitter, much less work has been done on the more than 400 smaller social media sites that tend to serve niche interests like art, music and academia. The study looks at information diffusion through mixed methods, including interviews and computational work, with the purpose of understanding how diffusion is similar and different across a wide range of sites.

Deep Learning with TensorFlow Discussion

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CCDS hosted Roc Myers for a TensorFlow talk with interested graduate students and faculty. Myers serves as subject matter expert for CCDS’s TRACE project. He has over 30 years of experience in intelligence systems’ operation and development and is the founder of Pertis. His company specializes in consulting and research of artificial intelligence and computer gaming technologies. Myers’ discussion explored uses and strategies for TensorFlow, an open source software library for numerical computation using data flow graphs.

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‘Illuminating 2016’ Project Provides a Platform For Computational Journalism/Conversation Research

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ournalists have always needed valid sources of information to report the news, and more so, to interpret the impact of news developments and events to their audiences. In today’s world, with important conversations conducted across a myriad of social media, digital and online chan­nels, there is much more information available for journalists to use in their reporting—but they face greater challenges capturing, compiling and assessing it. The iSchool’s Center for Computational Data Science (CCDS) and Behavior, Infor­ma­tion Technology and Society (BITS) Lab innovative project provides an impactful new resource for political journalists and the public at large. Illuminating 2016 was designed to assess what indicators across social media can be used to determine support for presidential candidates. The availability of that information permits the public a greater understanding of precisely what candidates are saying through their social media accounts.

“I think one of the most important things that we learned during this election cycle is that popular public perceptions of what the candidates are doing on social media don’t square with how they’re actually behaving on these platforms. For instance, our data showed us that Hillary Clinton used attack language more often on social media, but the public perception is that Trump was the one who was attacking more.” — JENNIFER STROMER-GALLEY, PROFESSOR, CCDS DIRECTOR

TRACKING STRATEGIES During the last presidential campaign, other projects had tracked social media postings of candidates and the structured data surrounding them—such as changes in the numbers of followers and follower rates. Illuminating 2016 uniquely tracked what the candidates were actually saying. The project analyzed the unstructured data of candidates’ Tweets and Facebook posts and through state-of-the-art computational analysis, was able to characterize, analyze and count data. Initially, researchers and students worked with journalists to determine what types of information were most helpful. They then built a tool to tag the topics contained in candidate messages, and in parallel, for the public’s conversations about the candidates. Then, for

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the full election cycle (18 months), researchers collected myriad Facebook and Twitter messages and images posted by major party presi­ dential candidates, as well as their Facebook comments and re­tweets and mentions on Twitter. Computer models were trained to cateProfessor Stromer-Galley presents 'Illuminating' conclusions. gorize the messages. Nine categories of messaging were developed: attack, advocacy, image, issue, endorsement, call-to-action, conversational, informational or ceremonial in nature.

SIX FULL SERVERS It amounted to a vast repository. Researchers filled six servers with data from the social media messages of the 24 presidential candidates, according to CCDS Director Professor Jennifer Stromer-Galley. They posted the results of the data collection online throughout the election cycle, and achieved a 70 percent rate of prediction accuracy, she says. Researchers also looked at how candidates’ messages changed over time, the way candidates drove public policy discussion through social media messaging, what types of campaign messages the public interacted with and spread the most. They also viewed how events and gaffes affected social media conversations, analyzed political fragmentation and assessed the extent to which the public

talked only with like-minded commenters. Extensive, charted data was updated as the election progressed, then made available online. During and after the campaign, CCDS team members discussed their findings and processes in the news media and in academic circles and in follow-up, produced several conference presentations and peer-reviewed journal articles.

NEXT: IDENTIFYING SHIFTS With the election done, the team took their assessments further, looking at the future of their social media data gathering platform and how to improve it. Stromer-Galley believes that the system of social listening, along with other measures of engagement, may eventually help identify shifts in public perception around political candidates—a highly valued political assessment tool. Plans also call for fine-tuning the process during 2018’s mid-term elections and the 2020 presidential bid. Team members have been updating algorithms and some aspects of machine learning in the meantime. They want to do computational analysis of the imagery that candidates include in their social media posts, on top of the wording in their messages. In addition to its application for campaign analysis, Stromer-Galley sees the system as a means to help in crisis communications and in the event of natural disasters. The team also continues to work with journalists to encourage them to integrate the system into their research and reporting. The project is supported by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and the iSchool. n

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TRACE Project Draws Funding From Intelligence Agency Contract

Multi-University, Multi-Disciplinary Effort Developing Web App to Enhance Critical Analysis and Creative Thinking

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Crowdsourcing User Network

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lyt

Nancy McCracken

Ana

Carsten Oesterlund

Analysis

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Jennifer StromerGalley

TRACE Supporting ST-guided M ys St tery ru -s ct ol ur vi es ng

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project supported by a contract from the CREATE (Crowdsourcing Evidence, Reasoning, Argumentation, Thinking and Evaluation) program of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, an arm of the Office for the Director of National Intelligence, is underway at the iSchool’s Center for Computational Data Sciences research hub. Multi-disciplinary in orientation and multidimensional in focus, the project involves a number of principal investigators with diverse specialties based in several universities around the U.S. Also participating is the Syracuse-based not-for-profit research and development company, SRC, Inc. Called TRACE (Trackable Reasoning and Analysis for Collaboration and Evaluation), the project aims to improve reasoning and intelligence analysis through the development of a web-based application that leverages the use of structured techniques, crowdsourcing and smart nudging to enhance analysts’ problem-solving abilities and foster creative thinking. Work builds on a careful analysis of the weaknesses of current approaches and varied ways to enhance critical decision-making. It is led by iSchool Professor Jennifer StromerGalley, who is joined by a team of principal investigators and a number of researchers, practitioners and graduate students with unique abilities and expertise. Their disciplines include human-computer interaction, deliberation, crowd­­sourcing, game and experimental design, interface and soft­ware design, cogni­tive and decision sciences and computational techniques. For its first phase, the project is worth $5,215,441 in funding, $1 million of which was awarded in 2017.

u ct

GOALS: ENHANCE REASONING AND COMMUNICATION Researchers are investigating the role of several techniques for enhancing reasoning while also promoting better communication and discussion among work groups. Their aim is to improve the division of labor and reduce typical communication and interaction errors in order to help intelligence analysts accurately and efficiently reason through complex tasks to produce clear, well-supported intelligence products. Game-based principles of human-computer interaction are being applied to create an engaging and intuitive solution that promotes efficiency, accuracy and clarity in analysis. The TRACE system also uses background software processes (such as machine learning, simple decision trees, and advanced natural language processing) and it adopts responsive and just-in-time mechanisms. “Our goal is to create a reasoning and reporting application that is not only effective but also appealing to users by making the process intriguing and fun while not interfering with their natural


Members of the TRACE project team meet in Syracuse in June, 2017.

“Our goal is to create a reasoning and reporting application that is not only effective but also appealing to users by making the process intriguing and fun while not interfering with their natural reasoning and writing abilities.” — JENNIFER STROMER-GALLEY, PROFESSOR, CCDS DIRECTOR

reasoning and writing abilities,” said StromerGalley. “What makes this project unique is that we are rigorously testing every aspect of our application using experimental research methods. When this project is done we will have a proven effective tool for people to use.”

EXAMINING DIGITAL TOOLS AND TACTICS The TRACE team is conducting a series of experiments in each of the project’s three phases to discern different techniques to identify the best approach to improve human reasoning through the use of digital tools. Those include testing and comparing the effects of different analytic techniques and how varied interactions affect reasoning and reporting to improve user-interface and application design.

They note that possible benefits of a platform such as TRACE may go beyond the intelligence com­­ munity to provide guidance to those interested in improving group communication and teamwork. The team is also exploring commercial technology applications. In addition to Stromer-Galley, principal investigators include James Folkestad of Colorado State University; Kate Kenski, of the University of Arizona; iSchool Associate Professor Carsten Oester­lund and as co-PI, Nancy McCracken, iSchool research associate professor. Additional PIs are: Lael Schooler and David Kellen, faculty from Syracuse University’s Arts and Sciences Depart­ ment of Psychology; Ben Clegg, of the Colorado State University Department of Psychology; and Brian McKernan of Sage College of Albany. The team is supported by iSchool Research Associate Professor Nancy McCracken, postdoctoral researcher Patrícia Rossini and CCDS research staff member Yatish Hegde. Two experts in intelligence analysis from SRC Inc., Roc Myers and Sarah Taylor, plus Deborah Plochocki, a PMP-certified technical manager at SRC, also join the group. n

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Study: How ICTs Create Resiliency During Life Transitions

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embers of populations that can become marginalized in society—from military personnel newly home from deployment, to women becoming new mothers, to people changing genders, to immigrants adjusting to all-new communities— face a number of crises managing and navigating the disruptions those life transitions trigger. Increasingly, information communication technologies are providing online support systems when society’s established systems and agencies fail to meet those personal and community needs. Assistant Professor Bryan Semaan is digging deeper into that equation to determine precisely how information communication technologies (ICTs) can fill the gap and improve peoples’ resilience to life disruptions. His study is one of the research projects underway in the BITS (Behavior, Information, Technology and Society) Lab. The work is being funded by a National Science Foundation grant of $173,205 to support research through 2019. Semaan’s goal is to provide a more empirically-situated understanding of how life transitions happen and how ICTs are used to navigate them. He believes that knowledge will provide a useful basis for improving the designs of technologies, advancing training and education for life transitions and influencing social and governmental policy. In the NSF-funded study, Semaan is looking at how military service members manage changing from a hierarchical, highlystructured, active-duty lifestyle to a typically unstructured civilian life. For many veterans, that transition can involve severe mental, physical, emotional and sometimes-invisible crises, he says. However, from online community spaces built around camaraderie to the development of new social media and mobile applications, ICTs are helping those in transition cope with the changes around

H Jeff Hemsley

Bryan Semaan

Jennifer StromerGalley

ow do people use information and communication technologies? How does peoples’ use of diverse technologies affect society? Those are the fundamental questions that iSchool researchers in the Behavior, Information, Technology and Society Laboratory (BITS) examine. Researchers conduct studies in the arenas of social media, social computing, social networks, text and data mining, natural language processing and information retrieval. They investigate issues of communication, human-computer interaction and computer-supported cooperative work. Their efforts take them into examinations of cultural issues in computing, crisis informatics (disruption), resilience and normalcy, serious games, social movements, information diffusion, civic engagement, e-particpation and digital politics. Their investigations result in the development of cutting-edge applications, tools and software to manage the issues people and society have regarding technologies, as well as the creation of impactful design, mobile and social media applications and online learning platforms. Recognizing that varied approaches can highlight different phenomena and inform understandings in different ways, BITS faculty, staff and students use a variety of methods in their work. These include ethnography, human and machine-driven content analysis, experiments, social networks analysis and data visualization. Lab directors: Jeff Hemsley, assistant professor; Bryan Semaan, assistant professor; and Jennifer Stromer-Galley, professor.

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LAB REPORT

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them, adapt to new situations and find camaraderie and support, Semaan notes. “I’m seeing more and more that veterans are developing their own online technology-centered systems that are directly related to gaps in what they’re provided by society upon their return,” he says. “Using online tools and technologies, people are self-organizing to build resilience for themselves and their community.” Semaan’s research delves specifically into how the technologies help people adapt, decide which ICT resources to use and employ tech to transact social and informational support. He also is examining how online support spaces are structured and sustained and he is identifying the requirements and designs for new ICTs that support transition resilience. The research combines several periods of intense data collection using both semi-structured interviews and observations of online data, such as social media communications. It also includes a participatory design and diary study that will inform the initial development and evaluation of a new ICT that can empower veterans to detect, make sense of and navigate invisible crises, he says. Semaan hopes the findings help create guidelines for training, education and policies to support veterans’ transitions to their non-military lives. Those findings should be transferrable to the issues of other groups undergoing personal and social transition, he believes. With his interests at the crossroads of sociology and humancomputer interaction, Semaan says the BITS Lab is perfectly suited to this research. “The ethos of social good and social responsibility as a researcher is what the BITS Lab means to me. I think a critical intersection for all of us is thinking very deeply and critically about technology, thinking more broadly about technology’s impact, and how technology can be a source of social change and social good.” n

Principal Investigator: Professor Jian Qin Metadata Lab is a research group that studies a wide range of topics related to metadata with two focus areas: big metadata analytics and metadata modeling and linking.

BIG METADATA ANALYTICS Researchers focus on understanding scholarly communication processes by using metadata (from data repositories and other databases) as the source to investigate the structures and dynamics of collaboration and intellectual networks. They also study the impact of such networks on scientific capacity and knowledge diffusion. Projects include: l Discovering Collaboration Network Structures l Dynamics in Big Data l Cyberinfrastructure-Enabled Collaboration Networks.

METADATA MODELING AND LINKING This research area examines big metadata residing in data repositories. Tracking and analyzing how research data in different repositories and/or different stages of a research lifecycle are related and linked permits development of models to represent domain knowledge networks for metadata applications. Projects include: l Metadata modeling for gravitational wave research data management l Metadata portability and relation typology. The initiatives employ a wide variety of methods and tools that are often highly computational and sometimes at a very large scale. Research in both big metadata analytics and metadata modeling and linking creates pathways for the two to dive deeper in the networks of collaboration and knowledge diffusion and benefit each other’s pursuit for new discoveries and knowledge.

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Researcher’s Toolbox: ‘EILEEN’ Dr. Acuna Devises Easier, Faster Way to Find Competitors, Collaborators and Funding Sources E I L E E N: Exploratory Innovator of LitEraturE Networks

W Daniel Acuna

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hat if there was a fast, automatic way for scientists, researchers, pre-award grant workers and others looking for research monies and funding sources to automatically discover who else is working on the same types of projects, and where the funds might exist to sponsor their research? That would be efficient, useful and it could revolutionize the way program officers evaluate proposals and how researchers find fundable ideas, thought Assistant Professor Daniel Acuna. So, he came up with an idea for creating an online data collection tool and recommendation system he calls “EILEEN,” which stands for “Exploratory Innovator of LitEraturE Networks.” The tool creates a unified dataset that captures diverse scientific disciplines and federal grant award types, helping researchers find similar published research on specific topics, appropriate funding opportunities and relevant grant sources much faster than they could normally. It also lets them discover who else in their field might be working on similar projects, thus be either potential project collaborators or funding competitors. The tool also allows users to look at specific project titles to assess whether similar works have been funded in the past, the kinds of organizations that have sponsored those projects, and the particular approach that attracted successful grant awards. Dr. Acuna was awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant totaling $168,712 for the project, formally titled, “Improving Scientific Innovation by Linking Funding and Scholarly Literature. The monies, an NSF EAGER (Earlyconcept Grants for Exploratory Research) grant, are to be used over three years (2016 through 2018). EAGER grants are designed specifically THE iSCHOOL @ SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

“It’s a system that will help both scientists and pre-award grant developers, and essentially anyone at a college or university doing any kind of active research. The tool helps them find similar publications and grants to what they themselves are proposing.” — DANIEL ACUNA, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR

to fund potentially transformative or exploratory research that explores new subjects, different methods or interdisciplinary approaches.

CREATING THE “BRAIN” Over the course of 2017, Acuna developed a working model of a search engine “brain,” a webbased navigational tool. It’s designed to help in the scoping and planning of funded research projects via an automated recommendation system. Using a few key words, the system looks for publications and grants across certain scholarly areas. Beyond merely a search engine, as the user saves and rejects information, the tool learns and fine-tunes both current searches and those on like areas in the future. The scope of the search is wide. Over the past year, the EILEEN team has worked on the project with datasets that include about 28 million publications and 3 million grants, Acuna says. The tool generates instantaneous reports about publications, grants, scientists and organizations related to users’ particular interests. “It’s a system that will help both scientists and pre-award grant developers, and essentially anyone at a college or university doing any kind of active research. The tool helps them find similar publica-


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tions and grants to what they themselves are proposing,” he explains. Doing the same kind of search with existing systems means a much more cumbersome, threeor four-step process, he adds. “There’s no way to do it. You’d have to go to several websites, first search for sources and then search for recommendations, and then use different sources to look for grants. So it would take you three to four steps to do the same things, and with horrible systems that were probably invented 20 years ago,” he contends. EILEEN, by comparison, is simple, user-friendly and very “Google-esque,” Acuna says. “It’s faster, more accurate and it widens your reach by the numbers of sources and scientists you can find.”

ALPHA VERSION AVAILABLE Acuna has launched what he calls the alpha version, a first-run prototype where users can establish a profile, set specific preferences and create their own library of saved searches. He has invited groups of researchers to use it, test it out and offer him their feedback. He’s considering if and when to move on to a Beta version someday, and has studied the markets and the processes required for commercialization. While the market for such a product might be small and developing a business around EILEEN would take him off his teaching career track, it’s still a one-day possibility, he says. In the meantime, he is encouraging scientists, scholars and award preparers to try the tool and see if it is useful to them, and a small number of researchers have given EILEEN a whirl.

“People find it is great,” Acuna reports. “The only problem that we’d like to solve is that we don’t have the impact of the documents built in. When you search things on Google, you get a scale of relevance and see those listings that have a lot of traffic. With ours, you get the key words, but the listing won’t show the papers that are the most famous. But we’re working on that,” he adds. The practical inspiration for this recommendation system came from Acuna working to overcome his own research challenges, he says. As a young scientist, Acuna recalls, it was cumbersome to find other scientists working in his specific interest area as well as search for appropriate potential grant sources. “I really want for junior scientists to get help. Junior scientists can feel really lonely, and it’s really hard to find appropriate grants. It’s my goal to help those people who are striving the first few months in their job, or people operating without a grant-writing or pre-award staff. I want to help those people, and if they can use this system and criticize it or offer suggestions for its use, that would be very good,” he explains. In its next phase, Acuna has help; a doctoral student whose focus is fine-tuning the tool’s usa­bil­ity, reach and effectiveness and web presen­ tation is working with him. n

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G R I D Director: Jason Dedrick

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esearchers here look at the impact of merging information technologies with the electric grid, the challenges involved in integrating smart meter technologies and the impact of those actions on consumer perception and behavior. Research projects undertaken and underway include:

SMART GRID ADOPTION Adoption of Smart Grid Technologies by Electrical Utilities: Factors Influencing Organizational Innovation in a Regulated Environment (National Science Foundation, $341,190) Smart grid technologies can reduce environmental impacts of electricity generation and distribution while improving the quality, reliability and efficiency of electricity supply. Because utilities operate in highly regulated environments, this innovation presents major organizational and technical challenges. This project has explored issues regarding innovative technologies and development and testing of a new model of organizational adoption. Principal investigator: Professor Jason Dedrick; co-principal investigators Professor Jeffrey Stanton and Associate Professor Murali Venakatesh. Data Privacy for Smart Meter Data: A Scenario-Based Study (National Science Foundation EAGER award, $266,101, 2014 – 2017) Smart electric meters are a key technology in modernizing the nation’s energy infrastructure, and they also can drive energy use and demand forecasting and control models. While smart meters capture energy use, the spectre of how that data may be used can create powerful customer privacy concerns. This project has looked at various data use and protection scenarios and dimensions of privacy concerns to assess what situations provide the highest level of acceptability to consumers.

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BIG DATA ANALYSIS OF HOUSEHOLD ELECTRICITY USE iSchool researchers have been analyzing big data sets from the Pecan Street Research Consortium, a global collaboration working on utility system operations, climate change, integration of distributed energy and storage and customer needs and preferences. The analysis ultimately has the potential to launch industry-wide changes in the way consumers use and pay for energy, how utilities plan peak usage and how the grid system can be optimized. Researchers are using huge, open-source data sets of timestamped electricity records from the project’s original field research. Participation is facilitated by the iSchool’s on-site IBM System Z mainframe computer capacity. Principal investigator is Professor Jason Dedrick; co-principal investigators Professor Jeffrey Stanton and Associate Professor Murali Venkatesh.

SECURE AND TRUSTWORTHY CYBERSPACE Cybersecurity Risks of Dynamic, Two-Way Distributed Electricity Markets (National Science Foundation, $344,184, 2016 – 2019) As the U.S. electric grid transforms from a one-way delivery channel to a distributed grid with two-way flows of information and electricity, consumers can become buyers and sellers in the market. That can help utilities reduce costly peak loads and outage risks, and firms can benefit from innovation, but such benefits can come with significant cybersecurity and privacy risks. This research identifies potential security and privacy risks associated with distributed electricity markets and defines acceptable levels of risk and trade-offs between risk reduction and performance of distributed markets. The project will provide guidance to utilities, regulators and others regarding balancing robust market structures with security and privacy protection. Principal investigator: Professor Jason Dedrick of the iSchool; co-principal investigators: Professor Peter Wilcoxen (SU’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs) and Associate Professor Steve Chapin (SU’s College of Engineering and Computer Science) and Keli Perrin (SU’s College of Law Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism).


ELECTRICITY MARKET MODELING Community Energy: Technical and Social Challenges and Integrative Solutions (National Science Foundation, $99,965, 2017 – 2019, with additional support from the Syracuse Center of Excellence) The concept of community energy involves integrating small-scale solar power, demand management and energy storage at the community level. Those efforts can create economic, environmental and social value for individuals and communities and improve reliability and resilience of the electric grid. Outstanding issues include perceptions of economic and behavioral incentives in a community context; how residents and other stakeholders view the concept and how data can be analyzed to promote participation. This planning project brings residents and stakeholders together in a smart grid community to create knowledge and tools to develop a program model for other U.S. communities. Principal investigator: Professor Jason Dedrick of the iSchool; co-principal investigators Tarek Rakha and Elizabeth Krietemeyer, assistant professors at the SU School of Architecture. (See article on page 22.)

VIS-SIM: A Framework for Designing Neighborhood Energy Efficiency Through Data Visualization and Calibrated Urban Building Energy Simulation (Syracuse Center of Excellence, $24,997, 2016-2017) This research visualizes the relationships between electric grid functioning (and how it can be made cleaner, more efficient and more resilient); the use of energy by buildings (and how to minimize it while increasing functionality and comfort for occupants); and the dynamic external available natural resources of solar and wind energy for matching resource with demand. It uses energy-use datasets from the Pecan Street Institute with visualization techniques and urban building simulation tools to develop, simulate, test and visualize future scenarios and strategies. Investigators are Elizabeth Kreitemeyer and Tarek Rakha, assistant professors at the SU School of Architecture; Lorne Covington, of Noir Flux; and Jason Dedrick, professor at the iSchool. Climate-specific Assessment of LEED for Neighborhood Development: Energy, Comfort, Walkability and Design Analysis of the Mueller Neighborhood of Austin, Texas (Sponsored by the Sustainable Enterprise partnership and the U.S. Green Building Council, 2017, $19,000.) This research aims to expand the research team’s urban building energy model to assess the climate-specific environmental, comfort, and design impacts of the USGBC rating system. Investigators are: Assistant Professors Elizabeth Kreitemeyer and Tarek Rakha of the SU School of Architecture and Professor Jason Dedrick of the iSchool. Note: some of the Smart Grid research projects also are funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Principal investigator: Professor Jason Dedrick; Co-Principal Investigator Jeffrey Stanton.

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G R I D

Cross-Campus Team Uses NSF, COE Funding to Develop Community Energy Models

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Jason Dedrick

Tarek Rakha

cross-disciplinary, cross-campus research project on smart energy use received one of the National Science Foundation’s first Smart and Connected Communities (S&CC) grants in 2017. The Foundation awarded $99,965 in funding to the interdisciplinary research team of Syracuse University faculty/Center of Excellence fellows Jason Dedrick, professor at the iSchool, and Tarek Rakha and Elizabeth Krietemeyer, assistant professors at Syracuse University’s School of Architecture. Their project examines the feasibility of a community energy project in Austin, Texas. Community energy involves integrating smallscale solar power, demand management and energy storage at the community level to create economic, environmental and social value for individuals and communities, while improving the reliability and resilience of the electric grid. Their work is designed to create knowledge and tools for a program planned as a model for other communities across the U.S.

DASHBOARDS AND WORKSHOPS

Elizabeth Krietemeyer

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GRID MODELS PROJECT Dedrick, Krietemeyer and Rakha also were awarded a complementary grant by the Syracuse CoE Faculty Fellows program for their project, “Community Energy Dashboard: A Tool for a Community Energy Approach.” That initiative focuses on developing an urban building energy model that supports clean and resilient functioning of the electric grid; minimizing building energy use while increasing occupant comfort; and matching external energy resources with building energy demand. By integrating energy datasets and visualization methods, the team can design, test and identify opportunities for energy conservation, production and architectural and urban planning design strategies for clean and renewable energy. Dedrick says the support of the Syracuse Center of Excellence has been instrumental in launching this area of research. “This planning grant represents the kind of cross-discipline, crosscampus research needed to pursue new and challenging opportunities such as Community Energy.” DRAFTER123/iSTOCKPHOTO BY GETTY IMAGES

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The team has worked to design community energy dashboards for a smart/connected community, the Mueller neighborhood in Austin, and has conducted workshops to enhance visualization and simulation of build environment energy performance. National Science Foundation S&CC funding is intended to support projects that are strongly interdisciplinary and integrative and that build research capacity to improve the understanding

of smart and connected communities. That is important, according to the NSF, since “cities and communities in the U.S. and around the world are entering a new era of transformational change, in which their inhabitants and the surrounding built and natural environments are increasingly connected by smart technology, leading to new opportunities for innovation, improved services and enhanced quality of life.”


LAB REPORT

Research Supporting Peoples’ Interactions with Tech Systems

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he Social Computing Systems (SALT) Lab focuses on systems research in social computing, seeking deep understandings of how people interact with sociotechnical computing systems. Researchers develop original designs that enable new forms of user/social interaction or impact existing user/social interaction. They also propose, develop and evaluate novel infrastructure solutions for a variety of social computing applications. Current research is funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Google and Syracuse University ADVANCE. Projects include:

CROWDSOURCING

CAN (Composable Accessiblity Infrastructure) The research aims to develop a lightweight utility infrastructure, CAN (Composable Accessibility Infrastructure), where software developers share functional modules and website or mobile app developers can easily find and integrate suitable accessibility modules into their sites or apps.

DPS (Public Safety) This project explores ways to improve public safety in a local community by using open crime data and crowdsourcing information.

Indoor Map The goal of the Indoor Map project is creating co-location technologies that can improve awareness about and potential uses of nearby facilities, resources and services to enhance learning on university campuses.

Community As Connection This effort provides a framework for crowdsourcing human knowledge and allowing people to share their knowledge as library resources. With local librarians as the centerpoint of resource coordination, the Lab designed a system to help promote community library events.

Emotion Map (Community Happiness) The project seeks to understand how increased awareness of selfemotions and local community emotions can help people implement different emotion regulation strategies via designing, implementing and evaluating a mobile social app.

PRIVACY AND SECURITY Accessible Authentication Studies on authentication (logging into a website) show that this task presents many challenges for people with disabilities, and this project aims to build novel authentication mechanisms that are accessible and privacy-preserving for that population. A preliminary study of the issues and development of an accessible authentication framework, with varied authentication mechanisms, is underway. (See article on page 24.)

Internet of Things (IoT) While emerging technologies such as IoT objects and systems like wearable devices, smart home appliances and drones are enabling exciting and innovative applications that can benefit people and society, they also raise important privacy and security questions. This research aims to unravel these challenges and design mechanisms to address the issues. continued on page 25   THE iSCHOOL @ SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

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CAREER NSF Award Permits Up-Close Study Of Tech Privacy Issues for Disabled/Visually Impaired Inclusive Privacy Project of SALT Lab Research

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he National Science Foundation is supporting a centerpiece iSchool research project regarding computer and tech privacy management for people with disabilities, particularly those with visual impairments. The initiative is made possible through a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program grant awarded to Assistant Professor Yang Wang. The $498,000 award funds research work over a period of five years for the project, “Inclusive Privacy: Effective Privacy Management for People with Visual Impairments.” The initiative is based in the iSchool’s SALT (Social Computing Systems) Lab. Its focus is developing novel privacy mechanisms that are accessible and usable to people with disabilities, particularly those having visual impairments. The project also aims to devise design principals for inclusive privacy mechanisms that can also support a wide range of populations. It’s a continuation of Professor Wang’s research in authentication (computer sign-on) challenges and technology privacy matters, particularly as those issues present problems for people with disabilities.

NEW METHODS, NEW INSIGHTS In its first phase this year, Wang and his research team conducted ethnographic studies. They specifically chose to use a shadowing methodology, with researchers spending between five and eight hours a day for a number of days with the visually impaired persons in the study. Researchers observed how the subjects used their computers for everyday tasks and how they interacted with technologies. The studies were conducted within the subjects’ social settings to provide a wider view of their situations and challenges. In addition, the studies included the “allies” of the subjects—people who assist and interact with them on a daily basis. Most studies have examined persons with visual disabilities isolated from their environment, however, this method provided a perspective of the subjects as persons with multifaceted identities, Wang says, and that aspect shed new light on how those with visual impairments do things, he adds. “The life experiences of people with visual impairments has sig­nificantly changed my view on how we should approach the design for this population. Before, like most scholars, we were thinking in terms of just designing for them. However, you have to

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THE iSCHOOL @ SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

understand their social interactions. You can’t just consider them on their own; you have to consider the people they interact with.” “It’s interesting because what we learn through the shadowing significantly changes the way we think about the problem space as well as the design space. So many aspects of identify shape the subjects’ daily experiences,” he continues. “We have to ask, ‘What are the real life challenges by people faced with visual challenges, especially regarding implications for their privacy and security?’” In addition to the observation sessions, follow-up interviews were conducted with study subjects to provide a comprehensive picture of the challenges the subjects faced.

NEXT: DESIGN SESSIONS In the next phase, the research team will again work closely with visually impaired users. Users will provide input and feedback as an integral part of the co-design process as the researchers develop privacy mechanisms, Wang says. The final phase of the project focuses on applying the project’s findings and newly created tools to other underserved populations beyond people who are visually impaired. Wang says the process of testing and learning for visually impaired users will permit researchers to see what other steps can be applied or adapted to serve populations with cognitive impairments, as well as the elderly, and how design principles for inclusive privacy mechanisms might be applied. The NSF CAREER award is one of the Foundation’s most prestigious. It is designed to support early career development activities of scholars who most effectively integrate research and education efforts, as well as those who comprise role models for their institutions. Wang is fulfilling the educational component of the award with privacy tutorials for the targeted populations. He is partnering in Syracuse with ARISE, a nonprofit organization that provides services and support to people with disabilities, to provide internet privacy and security tutorials and workshops in the community about privacy protection best practices. n


S ALT Lab research students and their families enjoy a summer picnic.

continued from page 23

Privacy Mirror

Research Team

This research aims to provide ordinary Internet users with transparency and control in different application domains (online tracking/ behavioral advertising and Android app permissions). The work investigates two main ideas: individualized mental models of privacy and a universal privacy dashboard.

The research team includes faculty members: Yang Wang and Yun Huang (co-directors); Wenliang (Kevin) Du (of the School of Computer Science and Engineering at SU); Jeff Hemsley, Jian Qin and Bryan Semaan, of the iSchool; Ines Mergel and Corey White, of the Maxwell School and School of Arts and Sciences, respectively, at Syracuse University; and R. David Lankes, now director of the University of South Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science. The Advisory Board consists of: Lorrie Faith Cranor, ACM Fellow, Federal Trade Commission chief technologist, professor at Carnegie Mellon University; Kevin Crowston, Associate Dean for Research and distinguished professor of information science at the iSchool; and Ping Zhang, founding co editor-in-chief (AIS THCI) and professor at the iSchool.

Mobile Social Systems With mobile social systems such as WhatsApp and WeChat gaining adoption worldwide, how people interact and socialize on these platforms has become an important question for research, and the research team is exploring those issues.

Privacy Nudges Anecdotal evidence and scholarly research have shown that Internet users may regret some of their online disclosures, and this project explores a “soft-paternalistic” approach to Internet use that helps individuals avoid such regrets. Researchers have designed mechanisms that nudge users to consider the content and audience of their online disclosures more carefully, while researchers continue to study when to invoke those nudging mechanisms. The project also involves the Privacy Nudge Team at Carnegie Mellon University.

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GRANTS SUMMARY

2017 Awards to iSchool Faculty:

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2.6 Million

chool of Information Studies faculty won new and incremental grant amounts in calendar year 2017 for their innovative research projects as follows.

NEW AWARDS: Grant title:

Grantor: 2017 Amount: PI:

Improving the Structure of Online Breakout Activities Using Pair Programming Techniques 2U $13,851 (Anticipated Award: $13,851) Jeffrey Saltz, associate professor

The research explores the impact of different approaches for student work styles in online breakout groups. It uses data science programming tasks in a controlled experiment to understand how varied approaches create effective student learning and student attitudes. The project also looks at collaborative task completion (distributed pair programming) as compared to informal team collaborations or having students work by themselves. Findings will be useful for how online instructors assign tasks to student breakout groups. Grant title: Grantor: 2017 Amount: PI:

Transition Resilience: Navigating Invisible Crises with ICTs National Science Foundation $173,205 (Anticipated Award: $173,205) Bryan Semaan, assistant professor

This research looks at how veterans returning home from war use information and communication technologies (ICTs), such as social and mobile media, to manage invisible crises in transition, such as unexpected or unusual dislocations that challenge ordinary means of solving problems. While technologies can improve peoples’ resilience to disruptions, there presently is a lack of understanding of how ICTs enable resiliency. The project looks at how transitions happen and how ICTs can help improve the designs of technologies, advance training and education for transition and influence policies.

Assistant Professor Bryan Semaan presents research on populations in transition at a veterans conference.

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Grant Title:

Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Connectivity Index (EECI) Grantor: Whitman School, Syracuse University (Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation) 2017 Amount: $12,206 (Anticipated Award: $12,206) PI: Alejandro Amerzcua, Whitman School of Management Additional Investigators: Jeffrey Saltz, associate professor, School of Information Studies with Jesse Lecy (Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs); Kira Reed, Whitman School This research studies the multiple dimensions of entrepreneurial ecosystems and their contribution to economic growth. Goals include: 1) Developing an index of entrepreneurial connectivity at the regional level and test it in three metropolitan statistical areas; 2) Exploring the regulatory entrepreneurial ecosystem and identifying configurations of policies that foster and promote entrepreneurial growth regionally; 3) Evaluating whether programs like business incubators, accelerators, and science parks contribute to high-tech industry concentrations and diversification of economic specialization. Grant Title:

Grantor: 2017 Amount: PI:

Access to the Gig Economy: Infrastructural Competence and the Participation of Underrepresented Populations National Science Foundation (EAGER grant) $52,299 (Anticipated Award: $52,299) Steven Sawyer, professor

In this project, researchers want to advance understanding of how people from disadvantaged backgrounds pursue work in the “gig economy” (such as contract work in programming and writing) and how they obtain, assemble and organize digital resources to accomplish their jobs. Goals include creating a better understanding of what is needed to make “gig” work successful; identifying particular challenges and needs of workers who come from disadvantaged backgrounds; and developing better data collection on contract or gig workers and the alternative uses of their digital platforms, applications, and devices. The research will contribute to expectations for training and preparing a digitally-enabled workforce of the future.


Grant Dollars Received FY 2012 – 2017 by the iSchool at SU

Amounts Awarded (in Millions)

8 7

$6.29

6

Grant Title:

$5.78

5

$4.14

4 3

1

2017 Amount: PI:

$1.78

$2.57

2

Grantor:

$1.64 2012 2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

Fiscal Year Grant Title: Grantor: 2017 Amount: PI:

Designing Future Library Leaders Institute of Museum and Library Studies $92,477 (Anticipated Award: $92,477) Rachel Ivy Clarke, assistant professor

Library leaders in the 21st century need to be collaborative, creative, socially innovative, flexible and adaptable problem solvers—skills evident in design. As libraries foster new innovative organizational cultures, design thinking, methods and principles are an integral part of this paradigm shift. This grant funds the convening of a Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian National Forum incorporating design thinking, methods and principles into master’s-level library education, then sharing those materials on the web. Goals are: 1) a review of current design approaches in library education and practice; 2) a national forum on design in master’s-level library education; 3) producing recommendations for ways educators can incorporate design thinking into their own courses and programs. Grant Title: Grantor: 2017 Amount: PI:

Library Integration in Institutional Learning Analytics Institute of Museum and Library Studies $99,876 (Anticipated Award: $99,876) Megan Oakleaf, associate professor

This one-year National Forum grant is designed to increase academic library involvement in institutional learning analytics and develop a detailed plan to prepare academic libraries to engage in using data to support student learning and success. Learning analytics use data to improve learning contexts and help learners succeed, while helping educators discover, diagnose and predict challenges to learning and achieve successful interventions. This project spearheads creating the vision, strategies and concrete plans to guide librarian involvement in institutional learning analytics to benefit student learning.

Cybersecurity Risks of Dynamic Two-Way Distributed Electricity Markets National Science Foundation – Syracuse Center of Excellent grant $99,965 (Anticipated Award: $99,965) Jason Dedrick, professor (In conjunction with SU School of Architecture faculty members Tarek Rakha and Elizabeth Krietemeyer)

The U.S. electric grid is being transformed from a one-way channel delivering electricity from central power plants to customers at set prices, toward a distributed grid with two-way flows of information and electricity and dynamic distributed markets. The benefits of distributed markets are potentially great for consumers and utilities, but with those benefits can come significant cybersecurity and privacy risks. Involving economics, computer science and public policy perspectives, this research seeks to create an event simulation framework model to test and assess the impact of cybersecurity on grid stability, market trust and privacy. Grant Title:

Grantor: 2017 Amount: PI: Co-PI:

Convergence HTF: A Research Coordination Network to Converge Research on the SocioTechnological Landscape of Work in the Age of Increased Automation National Science Foundation (Initial Convergence Award) $499,796 (Anticipated Award: $499,796) Kevin Crowston, associate dean for research Ingrid Erickson, assistant professor

The development of new technologies and intelligent, automated machines is rapidly changing the landscape of jobs and work. This grant coordinates convergent research that aims to better understand how both the human and technology sides of this frontier can be designed equitably, with goals of reinforcing positive outcomes and mitigating negative consequences of intelligent machines in work settings. The grant supports an annual convergence conference highlighting research regarding social-technological landscape of work; a series of workshops to expand and test research ideas as they develop; and establishing and maintaining shared online resources supporting this research community and its efforts.

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GRANTS SUMMARY

INCREMENTAL AWARDS Grant Title:

Grantor: 2017 Amount: PI:

Inclusive privacy: Effective Privacy Management for People with Visual Impairments (CAREER Award) National Science Foundation $104,593 (Anticipated Award: $866,904) Yang Wang, associate professor

This research involves the designing, implementing and evaluating of novel inclusive authentication methods for cloud and web computing for people with disability conditions as well as people without disability (subproject R3). The research phase involves meetings with a project group, reviewing relevant literature and conducting exploratory user research. The implementation phase involves participatory design with end users, fast prototyping, pilot testing and formative evaluations. The evaluation phase includes formative and summative evaluations of the new authentication mechanisms, with end users (both people with and without disability) to work on designing and implementing the accessibility open platform in collaboration with the investigators at Carnegie Mellon University. Grant Title:

Grantor: 2017 Amount: PI:

Improving Grant Reviewing and Scientific Innovation by Linking Funding and Scholarly Literature National Science Foundation $20,127 (Anticipated Award: $168,712) Daniel Acuna, assistant professor

Grant Title: Grantor:

2017 Amount: PI:

Trackable Reasoning and Analysis for collaboration and Evaluation IARPA (U.S. Office of National Intelligence, Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity – CREATE program) The first phase of the project is worth $5,215,441, with $1 million awarded in 2017. Jennifer Stromer-Galley, professor With Nancy McCracken, research associate professor and Carsten Oesterlund, associate professor and Lael Schooler (Psychology)

The TRACE project aims to improve reasoning and intelligence analysis through development of a web-based application that leverages the use of structured techniques, crowdsourcing and smart nudging to enhance analysts’ problem-solving abilities and to foster creative thinking. The CREATE (Crowdsourcing Evidence, Reasoning, Argumentation, Thinking and Evaluation) Program) grant goal is to create a reasoning and reporting application that is effective and also appealing to users by making the process intriguing and fun while not interfering with natural reasoning and writing abilities. The project is unique in that it makes use of rigorous testing at every phase of the application using experimental research methods. The effort involves a multidisciplinary team of researchers from Syracuse University, the University of Arizona, Colorado State University and SRC Inc.

This project’s goal is creating a web-based tool that produces instantaneous reports upon identifying scientists, their organizations and their topical interests, and capturing information about federal grant award types and funding programs, after sourcing pertinent information from disparate repositories. The project examines approximately 2.6 million grants from the Federal Reporter and a consolidated, multisource dataset of millions of articles from Microsoft Academic Graph. The unified dataset and web tool could revolutionize how program officers evaluate proposals and how researchers find fundable ideas, making science faster, more accurate and less biased.

TRACE project team at their kickoff meeting.

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Grant Title: Grantor: 2017 Amount: PI:

Glitch Zoo: Teaming Citizen Science with Machine Learning to Deepen LIGOs View of the Cosmos (INSPIRE) Northwestern University/National Science Foundation $96,900 (Anticipated Award $294,818) Kevin Crowston, associate dean for research, with Carsten Oesterlund, associate professor

This innovative project is developing a citizen science system to support the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (aLIGO), the most complicated experiment ever undertaken in gravitational physics. The research involves coupling human classification with a machine learning model that learns from citizen scientists and guides how information is provided to participants. A novel feature is reliance on volunteers to discover new glitch classes, not just use existing ones. It involves research on the human-centered computing aspects of this socio-computational system, inspiring future citizen science projects and making volunteers engaged partners in scientific discovery. Grant Title:

Grantor: 2017 Amount: PI:

Disability and Rehabilitation Research Program: Inclusive Cloud and Web Computing Carnegie Mellon University (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) $173,945 (Anticipated Award $866,904) Yang Wang, assistant professor, with Yun Huang, assistant professor

This project aims to provide people with disabilities, particularly those with visual impairments, with better computer privacy tools. Common tools that indicate secure connections are often designed without considering that they are hard for people with visual impairments to use. To better understand the privacy challenges people with visual impairments face, researchers will study their use of and known privacy concerns around technologies. They’ll also work with people with visual impairments to generate, test and improve a number of design ideas. Finally, they will work to generalize the studies and designs to other populations, including older adults. Goals are to produce inclusive designs for privacy management tools that work better for everyone.

Sarah Inoue and Paul Gandel (center) from the iSchool meet with Effat University administrators.

Grant Title: Grantor: 2017 Amount: PI:

Cooperative Agreement between Effat University and Syracuse University Effat University $192,332 (Total awarded 2013 – 2017: $451,823; renewed in 2018) Paul Brian Gandel, professor

This award continues for another year the successful partnership between the iSchool and Syracuse University and Effat University that began in 2013. The iSchool has helped Effat University with its digital literacy and information science course offerings, reviewing curriculum, coursework and programs to assure their offerings are on par with international information field standards. Effat is an all-women’s undergraduate college in Jeddah and the first private, non-profit female university in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

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Visiting Scholars 2017

T

he iSchool hosted a number of visiting faculty members and doctoral scholars from a range of domestic and international institutions during the year. Guest scholars contributed research efforts, operational functions, course teaching, project proposals and expansion of the iSchool’s inter-school and inter-continental reach over the course of the year. MATTHEW ADIGUN Visiting faculty Faculty Sponsor:  Lee McKnight Institution:  University of Zululand and United Nations University Position:  Senior Professor and Research Leader Country:  South Africa Detail: Professors Adigun and McKnight have collaborated for several years. Adigun’s summer 2017 research visit involved further planning for their Syracuse UniversityUniversity of Zululand African national digital transformation project. The effort is expected to begin in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Liberia, with potential expansion to other African nations after a pilot phase. Adigun’s United Nations University research on edge-cloud computing in rural Africa is relevant to the project. Plans call for his students, along with students at other African universities and at Syracuse University, to contribute to the project research.

MAXIPHOTO/iSTOCKPHOTO BY GETTY IMAGES

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CHARLES (CHRIS) HINNANT Visiting faculty Faculty Sponsor:  Steven Sawyer Position:  Associate Professor Country: USA Detail: Professors Hinnant and Sawyer pursued three projects. Two were research-oriented and focused on combining data on information sharing in public safety, and advancing a proposal idea around data sharing in the public sector. A third was instruction-oriented, involving updating and developing material for the iSchool’s course IST 614, Introduction to Managing Information Professionals. Hinnant, whose specialties are information management and policy, social and organizational informatics and public policy and management, led one of the course sections. AMIRA REZGUI Doctoral student, 2016-2017 Faculty Sponsor:  Kevin Crowston Institution:  Telecom Bretagne Country:  Tunisia (LeBardo) in Northern Africa Detail:  Amira Rezgui is a post-doctoral researcher who is working with Associate Dean for Research Crowston on his stigmergic coordination project. Her role is overseeing field tests of a new system. The research looks at coordination mediated by changes to a shared work product via stigmergy, as opposed to explicit or implicit coordination methods. It examines Wikipedia, as one of the most successful experiments in online collaborative knowledge building, for evidence of stigmergic coordination.


REBEKAH TROMBLE Visiting faculty Faculty Sponsor: Jenny Stromer-Galley Institution: The Institute of Political Science, Leiden University Position: Assistant Professor Country: The Netherlands Detail: Assistant Professor Tromble researches and teaches on media and politics, with particular interests in public discourse and digital research methods and ethics. She was a visiting scholar at the iSchool’s Center for Computational and Data Sciences in 2017 and has worked with iSchool faculty and others on various assessments of content and community building within social media communication avenues. SHI YUAN Doctoral student Faculty sponsor:  Bei Yu Institution:  Beihang University, School of Economics and Management Country: China Detail: Shi Yuan has participated in Professor Yu’s research project on natural language processing for health information quality, developing algorithms for automatic identification of health claims in online health news. The research helps identify potential quality issues, such as exaggerations, that may appear in health news found online. Shi Yuan and Professor Yu have published papers and made presentations together on the topic.

TONG ZENG Doctoral student Faculty sponsor:  Daniel Acuna Institution:  Nanjing University School of Information Management Country: China Detail: Supported by the China Scholarship Council, Zeng has been here working with Acuna on building a recommendation system to indicate where citations are needed in a document, then automatically filling in the proper citation. Zeng has completed the first phase by developing a tool that assesses where citations are needed. He is continuing on the second phase of the project. The tool will have uses in academia and will be helpful in determining when documents might be considered “fake news,” if they are lacking supporting reference and citation. YUELINANG ZENG Doctoral student Faculty sponsor:  Jian Qin Institution:  iSchool at Wuhan University Country:   China Detail: Zeng’s interest in working with Professor Qin stems from his interest in applying the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) for data management to study the behavior and practices of social sciences researchers in China. The CMM for research data management was a project Qin and Association Dean for Research Kevin Crowston worked on several years ago. Zeng currently is also completing work on his dissertation proposal.

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F A C U LT Y & S T U D E N T N O T E S

Selected Awards and Accolades ASSOCIATION LEADERSHIP

Michelle Kaarst-Brown, associate professor, continues her role as senior editor of the MIS Quarterly Executive, a journal focused on quality research published for the CIO and other executive audiences.

Jennifer Stromer-Galley, professor, completed her two-year term as president of the Association of Internet Researchers. She remains as past president for two years and continues to serve on the association’s executive committee. Jennifer StromerGalley

Barbara Stripling

Barbara Stripling, senior associate dean and associate professor of practice, was presented the American Library Association (ALA)’s 2017 Joseph W. Lippincott Award. The honor recognizes distinguished service to the profession of librarianship through outstanding participation in asso­ciations, notable published professional writing and other significant activities. Her service has included being president of the ALA, the American Association of School Librarians and the New York Library Association. She retired from the iSchool at the end of the 2017-2018 academic year.

HONORS AND RECOGNITIONS Michelle Kaarst-Brown

Rachel Ivy Clarke

PATENTS Joon S. Park, professor, was issued a U.S. patent for Role-based Access Control to Computing Resources in an Inter-Organizational Community, U.S. Patent US9,769,177 B2, September 2017.

JOURNAL EDITORSHIPS Joon Park

Kevin Crowston, associate dean for research and distinguished professor of information science, was named editor in chief of ACM Transaction on Social Computing (ACM.org). He also served as co-editor in chief of Information, Technology & People.

Jeffrey Fouts

Jeffrey Fouts, adjunct faculty member and director of instructional technology at the iSchool’s Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning, presented a talk, “How A Faculty Center Can Help Foster Best Practices: Getting the iSchool at Syracuse University Into the 21st Century,” during the 2017 iConference in Wuhan, China.

Steven Sawyer, professor, was nominated to serve a three-year term as a member of the editorial board of the Journal of the Association of Information Systems. Kevin Crowston

Jennifer Stromer-Galley, professor, concluded a year’s term as associate editor for the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, a top journal for scholarship that advances theory around social behavior via digital media. In that time she reviewed more than 100 submissions and oversaw the revision process for approximately 40 submissions.

Steven Sawyer

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Rachel Ivy Clarke, assistant professor, was presented with the 2017 Doctoral Dissertation Award from the iSchools Organization, an honor recognizing outstanding work in the information field. Nominations are solicited from the more than 80 institutions worldwide that comprise its members. Her dissertation, conducted at the University of Washington’s Information School, “It’s Not Rocket Library Science: Design Epistemology and American Librarianship” was honored at the 2017 iConference in Wuhan, China. Clarke also received the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE)’s Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Award. The award recognizes dissertations that deal with substantive issues related to library and information science. Her dissertation framed librarianship as a design discipline, rather than a social science one. Clarke also hosted a solo exhibition of her work, “The Invisible Maintenance of Bibliographic Data. The Maintainers II: Labor Technology and Social Order,” at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J.

Caroline Haythornthwaite

Caroline Haythornthwaite, professor and director, MS in Library and Information Science & MS LIS with School Media Specialization programs, was awarded the Association for Information Science and Technology (AIS&T)’s Research in Information Science Award for 2017. The honor recognizes an outstanding research contribution in the field of information science and achievements that have significant impact in the field from a systematic program of research in a single area.


Jeff Hemsley

Jian Qin

Bryan Semaan

Murali Venkatesh

Jeff Hemsley, assistant professor, had his artistic data visualization, “Occupy the Amendment,” presented at the China Visualization Conference Art Exhibition in Qingdao, China, an international/ invitational exhibition. Hemsley also was chosen by the graduate class of 2017 as recipient of the annual Jeffrey Katzer Professor of the Year Award for graduate-level faculty. The honor is one designated each year at the School of Information Studies commencement ceremonies. Jian Qin, professor, had her book, Metadata, 2nd edition (authored with Marcia Lei Zeng), named a 2017 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title. The selection to that list recognizes her work as among the best scholarly titles reviewed by Choice, the publishing unit of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) organization. The status is awarded to only about 10 percent of some 6,000 works Choice reviews each year, providing the highest recognition of the academic library community. Bryan Semaan, assistant professor, served as a visiting professor in the information science department at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the fall 2017 semester. He also was chosen as a participant in The Consortium for Science of Sociotechnical Systems Leadership Retreat Participant 2017. Murali Venkatesh, associate professor and director of the iSchool’s Community and Information Technology Institute, was selected by the graduating class of 2017 as the recipient of the year’s Jeffrey Katzer Professor of the Year Award for undergraduate classes. The award is presented annually by members of the undergraduate graduating class at the School of Information Studies commencement.

Bei Yu, Katchmar-Wilhelm associate professor and faculty lead for the CAS in Data Science, had her paper, “CORA: A Platform to Support Citation Context Analysis” (written with School of Information Studies analyst Yatish Hegde and doctoral student Yingya Li) named the Most Interesting Preliminary Results Paper award for the iSchools Organization’s iConference 2017. Bei Yu

Ping Zhang

Ping Zhang, professor, completed two distinctive administrative assignments for Syracuse University as one of two University Provost’s faculty fellows in 2017. She helped plan and initiate a universitywide testbed for outreach to all university faculty on the issue of defining a voluntary resolution agreement for a case related to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) and Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). She worked on that initiative with Syracuse University’s senior associate vice president for operational excellence and the director and staff of the SU Office of Disability Services. Zhang also served as a team co-chair for the Middle States Decennial Self-Study, a comprehensive review of all aspects of Syracuse University, including operations, services and governance that is coordinated centrally by the Provost’s Office. The self-study focused on the university’s compliance with the Middle States Standards for Accreditation, Requirements of Affiliation, and Accreditation-Relevant Federal Regulations. Zhang co-chaired a team reviewing the university’s adherence to guidelines for Standard VII Governance, Leadership and Administration.

Lu Xiao, associate professor, with co-authors Taraneh Khazaei and Robert Mercer, had their paper, “Writing to Persuade: Analysis and Detection of Persuasive Discourse,” judged as one of four finalists for the Best Completed Research Paper (i.e., Lee Dirks Award for Best Paper) at 2017 iConference in Wuhan, China.

Lu Xiao

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F A C U LT Y & S T U D E N T N O T E S

Books, Book Chapters, Journal Articles BOOKS PUBLISHED

JOURNAL ARTICLES

Jeffrey Saltz, associate professor, and Jeffrey Stanton, professor, published the textbook, An Introduction to Data Science (Springer, October 2017).

Carlos Caicedo, associate professor, published “Spectrum Consumption Model Builder: A Software Tool to Enhance Spectrum Sharing,” in Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing (with Arnav Mohan), 2017.

Jeffrey M. Stanton, professor, had his book, Reasoning With Data: An Introduction to Traditional and Bayesian Statistics Using R, published by Guildford Press in May. The book teaches the use of inferential statistical thinking to check assumptions, assess evidence about beliefs and avoid over-interpreting results with both classical and Bayesian approaches to inference.

BOOK CHAPTERS PUBLISHED Kevin Crowston, assistant dean for research and distinguished professor of information science, had a book chapter, “Levels of Trace Data for Social and Behavioral Science Research,” published in the Springer book by Editors Sorin Adam Matei, Sean Goggins and Nicholas Jullien, Big Data Factories: Collaborative Approaches (ISBN 978-3-31959186-5). Caroline Haythornthwaite, professor and director of the iSchool’s MIS library programs, published a second edition of her 2016 title, Handbook of E-Learning Research (co-authored with Richard Andrews, Jude Fransman and Eric M. Meyers and published by Sage Publishing. This edition addresses the continued need for study and understanding of learning practices (formal, informal and non-formal) in contemporary technology-supported and technologyenabled educational, work and social settings. Megan Oakleaf, associate professor, had her workbook, Academic Library Value: The Impact Starter Kit, listed in the ALA store online. The workbook is a resource kit for professional development workshops and to help academic libraries measure their existing value while also identifying ways to increase their value in the context of their institutional missions. Barbara Stripling, professor, had her chapter, “Empowering Students to Inquire in a Digital Environment,” included in the 2017 publication of the book, School Librarianship: Past, Present, and Future (ed. Susan Alman, New York; Rowman & Littlefield). Stripling retired from the iSchool at the end of the 2017-2018 academic year.

Rachel Ivy Clarke, assistant professor, published “Using Critical Design to Explore the Future of Libraries,” in Library Hi-Tech News 34 (9): 6-9 (invited contribution); and “Understanding Appeals of Video Games for Readers’ Advisory and Recommendation” (with Jim Ha Lee, Hyerim Cho and Travis Windleharth) in Reference & User Services Quarterly, 57 (2): 127-139. Kevin Crowston, associate dean for research, had several articles published in academic journals in 2017: “Gamers, Citizen Scientists, and Data: Exploring Participant Contributions in Two Games With A Purpose” (with Nathan Prestopnik and Jun Wang), in Computers in Human Behavior “Gravity Spy: Integrating Advanced LIGO Detector Characterization, Machine Learning and Citizen Science” (with Michael Zevin, Scott Coughlin, Sara Bahaadini, Emre Besler, Neda Rohani, Sarah Allen, Miriam Cabero, Aggelos Katsaggelos, Shane Larson, Tae Kyoung Lee, Chris Lintott, Tyson Littenberg, Andrew Lundgren, Carsten Oesterlund, Joshua Smith, Laura Trouille and Vicky Kalogera), published in Classical and Quantum Gravity “Roles and Politeness Behavior in Community-Based Free/Libre Open Source Software Development” (with Kangning Wei, U. Yeliz Eseryel and Robert Heckman), was published in Information & Management “Organizational IT Infrastructures in the Era of IT Consumerization as Changing Interdependencies Among Technology, People and Work Practices” (with Mohammad Hossein Jarrahi, Kateryna Bondar and Bernhard Katzy), was published in the International Journal of Information Management “Core-Periphery Communication and the Success of Free/Libre Open Source Software Projects” (with Ivan Shamshurin), was published in Core Journal of Internet Services and Applications (JISA), Thematic Series on FOSS Development Core Journal of Internet Services “Pursuing Best Performance In Research Data Management by Using the Capability Maturity Model and Rubrics,” written with iSchool Professor Jian Qin and Arden Kirkland, an iSchool adjunct faculty member, was published in the October 2017 issue of the Journal of eScience Librarianship.

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Martha Garcia-Murillo, professor, and Ian MacInnes, associate professor, had their article, “Cosi Fan Tutte: A Better Approach than the Right to Be Forgotten,” published in the journal, Telecommunications Policy, in December. Jeff Hemsley, assistant professor, was published in the Journal of Information Technology and Politics for the article, “Tweeting To The Target: Candidates’ Use of Strategic Messages and @Mentions on Twitter,” written with iSchool faculty members Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Sikana Tanupabrungsun and Bryan Semaan. Yun Huang, assistant professor, had her work, “Ontology Informed Design to Advance Developers’ Informal Online Learning,” published in the Journal of Educational Technology & Society. (Co-author is Brian Dobreski). She also was published in ACM Computing Surveys for “Nudges for Privacy and Security: Understanding and Assisting Users’ Choices Online,” (a paper with co-authors Pedro Leon, Idris Adjerid, Rebecca Hunt Balebako, Laura Brandimarte, Saranga Komanduri, Florian Schaub, Manya Sleeper, Shomir Wilson, Alessandro Acquisti, Lorrie Faith Cranor, and Norman Sadeh. That publication also included as a co-author Assistant Professor Yang Wang. Megan Oakleaf, associate professor, published “Academic Libraries and Institutional Learning Analytics: One Path to Integration” (authored with Anthony Whyte, Emily Lynema and Malcolm Brown), in the Journal of Academic Librarianship. Oakleaf also had her article, “The Academic Library’s Role in the Next Generation Digital Learning Environment: Expanding Support for Student Learning and Success” (with Scott Walter and Malcolm Brown), published in the August 2017 issue of EDUCAUSE Review. Jeffrey Saltz, associate professor, was published in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology for “Predicting Data Science Socio-Technical Execution Challenges by Categorizing Data Science Projects,” written with Ivan Shamshurin and Colin Connors.

Jennifer Stromer-Galley, professor, had her article, “Testing the Power of Game Lessons: The Effects of Art and Narrative on Reducing Cognitive Bias,” published in the International Journal of Communication. (Co-authors are Mikeal Martey, Adreienne Shaw, Kate Kenski, Benjamin Clegg, James Folkestad, Tobi Saulnier, and Tomek Strzalkowski). Additionally her article, “Social Media, U.S. Presidential Campaigns, and Public Opinion Polls: Disentangling Effects,” (with co-authors Patricia Rossini, Jeff Hemsley, Kate Kenski, Feifei Zhang, Lauren Bryant and Bryan Semaan) was published in the May issue of the Association of Internet Researchers collection. Lu Xiao, associate professor, published two papers in 2017: “Discourse Relations in Rationale-Containing TextSegments,” published in October’s Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (written with Niall Conroy) “Toward The Automated Detection of Individuals’ Rationales in Large-Scale Online Open Participative Activities–A Conceptual Framework, Group Decision and Negotiation,” published with Jennifer Stromer-Galley and Agnes Sandor in the Journal of Group Decision and Negotiation, in cooperation with the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences. She also presented a talk in May at the School of Information Management at Nanjing University, Nanjing, China, titled, “Internet Users’ Reasoning in Large-Scale Online Open Participative (LSOOP) Activities,” and offered a poster at the 3rd Annual International Conference of Computational Social Science in Cologne, Germany: “What Makes a User’s Comment Persuasive in Online Discussions? An Entry-Order Examination.”

Steven Sawyer, professor, was published in International Reports on Socio-Informatics (IRSI, 14(3), 29-33) for “More Than Nomadicity: The Paradoxical Affordances of Liminality,” co-authored by Mohammad Hossein Jarrahi.

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F A C U LT Y & S T U D E N T N O T E S

Keynotes, Panels and Workshops Carlos Caicedo, associate professor, was invited to speak at a panel at the Columbia University Business School in April. His presentation was titled, “Dynamic Spectrum Resource Sharing Technology Alternatives.” Rachel Ivy Clarke, assistant professor, participated in a panel on library leadership, “I’m a Librarian: Ask Me Anything!,” at the New York Library Association conference. She also presented a talk at the American Association of Law Librarians Upstate New York Chapter annual meeting, “You Are a Designer: Rethinking Librarianship as a Design Profession.” Caroline Haythornthwaite, professor, co-moderated a featured panel at the 8th International Social Media and Society Conference in Toronto. Entitled, “Women in Social Media: Safe and Unsafe Spaces,” its co-moderator was Stephanie Teasley and panelists were iSchool faculty members Jennifer Stromer-Galley and Ingrid Erickson, along with Libby Hempfill and Alyssa Wise.

Carolyn Haythornthwaite

Marcene Sonneborn

Jeffery Hemsley, assistant professor, took part in the AoIR Early Career Scholars Workshop at Internet Research 18: The 18th Annual Meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers in Estonia. Hemsley also took part in that conference’s Social Media Data Bootcamp and Research Hackathon. Megan Oakleaf, associate professor, hosted a roundtable exploring the advantages, opportunities and challenges of using learning analytics as a tool to augment the value proposition of libraries. The roundtable was held at the at the Association of College and Research Libraries conference in Baltimore. Co-speakers were Scott Walter of DePaul University and Debbie Malone of DeSales University. Oakleaf also took part in two panel sessions at that event. The first was “Closing the ‘Data Gap’ Between Libraries and Learning: The Future of Academic Library Value Creation, Demonstration and Communication.” The second panel was titled, “Data in the Library is Safe, But That’s Not What Data is Meant For.”

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Steven B. Sawyer, professor, presented on the panel, “Organizational and Institutional Work in Data Infrastructures,” at the American Society of Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Annual Meeting 2017. The topic paper, written by Kalpana Shankar and Kristin Eschenfelder, focused on findings from their project on governance of scholarly data sources. Sawyer also participated in the DeVries Colloquium on Academic Information Systems at Iowa State University, speaking about iSchools. Marcene S. Sonneborn, professor of practice, participated on a panel for Innovation Discovery Event (IDE) Day at the Griffiss Institute in Rome, New York. Panelists were charged with brainstorming with Griffiss Institute researchers to help them to reactively develop/advance their innovations/research ideas/disclosures by asking questions, making suggestions, and expanding the list of potential applications for the researchers’ ideas in the areas of cybersecurity, telecommunications and data science. Sonneborn also spoke about entrepreneurial and tech­nology commercialization issues and coaching at two conferences: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s New York Automation & Robotics Conference; and SUNY Stony Brook’s 13th International Conference and Expo at the Center of Excellence for Wireless and Information Technology. Jennifer Stromer-Galley, professor, was a plenary panelist on the topic, “Civic Technology and Public Deliberation,” at the 2017 International Conference on Deliberation and Decision Making: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Civic Tech, in Singapore. Stromer-Galley provided a keynote address, “Taking a Long View of Social Media and Presidential Campaigning,” at the Symposium on Social Media and Presidential Politics at Hofstra University. The event took place at the Peter Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs. Stomer-Galley also presented several invited talks in 2017. She discussed “Social Media and the 2016 Presidential Campaign: Mobilization and Engagement with the Public” at the Annette Strauss Civic Media Institute at the University of Texas, Austin; and “Contextual Constraints and the Performance of Self in Online Multi-Player


Games: The Circumscribed Ludic Self,” at the UT Austin Communication Studies Department. She presented on “Social Media and the 2016 Presidential Campaign” at Brigham Young University, and also in a talk for the Communication and New Media Department at the National University of Singapore. At the Theorizing Communication Symposium at Pennsylvania State University, she addressed, “Theorizing Communication in a Digitally Networked Age.” She also took part in a panel on the proliferation of fake news in the digital era at a forum hosted by the Tully Center for Free Speech at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Lu Xiao, associate professor, participated on a panel at the ASIS&T annual meeting, presenting on the topic, “Incorporating Values Sensitive Design into Crowdsourcing Methodologies for Knowledge Collaboration.”

Yang Wang

Yang Wang, assistant professor, presented at the 2nd Workshop on Inclusive Privacy and Security in Santa Clara, Calif., at the Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS2017). Wang also took part in several other workshops in 2017. For his workshop at CSCW2017, called “In Whose Best Interest? Exploring the Real, Potential and Ethical Concerns in Privacy-Focused Agendas,” Wang spoke on, “Whose Privacy? The Case of Drone Controllers and Bystanders.” He presented on “Inclusive Security and Privacy” at the New Security Paradigm Workshop (NSPW2017), with doctoral student Yaxing Yao, plus addressed “Designing Task-Oriented Text Commands for Screen Readers and Screen Magnifiers” at the CHI 2017 Workshop on Ubiquitous Text Interaction (with doctoral student Natã Barbosa).

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Selected Conference Presentations, Papers and Posters Carlos Caicedo, associate professor, presented a paper, “Spectrum Management Issues for the Operations of Commercial Services with UAVs,” at the Research Conference on Communications, Information and Internet Policy. Caicedo also presented a poster on the topic, “A Standard Method for Modelling Spectrum Consumption,” at the IEEE International Symposium on Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks (DySPAN) in March. (Co-authors are: Anthony Rennier, Alex Lackpour, Reinhard Schrage, John A. Stine, Matthew Sherman and Mieczyslaw Kokar.) Rachel Ivy Clarke, assistant professor, presented at the American Library Association annual conference on “From MLS to MLD: It’s Time to Integrate Design Thinking and Philosophy into LIS Education,” co-authored with Stephen Bell. Clarke also presented at the American Literature Conference on “Powerful Propaganda: Patrons’ Reading Selections in the Washington County (MD) Free Library, 1901-1915.” Kevin Crowston, assistant dean for research, presented two papers at the International Conference on System Sciences in Waikoloa, Hawaii: “Blending Machine and Human Learning Processes” (written with Associate Professor Carsten Oesterlund and Tae Kyoung Lee); and “Comparing Data Science Project Management Methodologies Via a Controlled Experiment” (authored with Associate Professor Jeffrey Saltz). Crowston also presented “Work Features to Support Stigmergic Coordination in Distributed Teams” (written with Howison James, Francesco Bolici and Associate Professor Carsten Oesterlund) at the Academy of Management Conference in Atlanta. Ingrid Erickson, assistant professor, presented a short paper at the 8th International Social Media and Society Conference, “Creating Safety as a Form of Gendered Labor: The Case of Wikipedia.”

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Caroline Haythornthwaite, professor, had her paper, “Social Media in Educational Practice: Faculty Present and Future Use of Social Media in Teaching,” included in proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Jeff Hemsley

Rachel Ivy Clarke

Jeff Hemsley, assistant professor, along with Martha Garcia-Murillo, professor, and Ian MacInnes, associate professor, presented at the 45th Research Conference on Communications, Information and Internet Policy. Their paper was “An Analysis of Diffusion of Universal Basic Income Policy over Twitter.” Hemsley also presented two additional papers at Internet Research 18: The 18th Annual Meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers in Estonia. They were: “A Study of Diffusion in the Dribbble Art World” (with doctoral students Jennifer Sonne, Sikana Tanupabrungsun, Yihan Yu and Suchitra Deekshitula. and “Automated Diffusion? Bots and Their Influence During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election” (authored with postdoctoral researchers Olga Boichak, doctoral student Sikana Tanupabrungsun, Research Associate Patricia Rossini and F.D. Espinosa and Sam Jackson. Hemsley’s paper, “Call to Retweet: Negotiated Diffusion of Strategic Political Messages,” was included in proceedings of the ACM Conference on Social Media and Society (SM&S 2017). Another of his papers, written with Professor Martha Garcia-Murillo and Associate Professor Ian MacInnes, “Retweets for Policy Advocates: Tweet Diffusion in the Police Discussion Space of Universal Basic Income,” was included in the proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Social Media & Society. He also presented, “Social Media Strategies and Public Opinion Polls in the Early Stages of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaigns,” (completed with Research Associate Patricia Rossini, doctoral students Sikana Tanupabrungsun, Feifei Zhang, Jerry Robinson and Professor Jennifer StromerGalley). “A Method for Computational Topic Identification in Social Media Messages” (which Hemsley wrote with Sam Jackson, Feifei Zhang, Olga Boichak, Yingya Li, Professor Jennifer Stromer-


Galley, Assistant Professor Bryan Semaan and doctoral student Lauren Bryant) was included in the 2017 APSA Annual Meeting & Exhibition. Jennifer Stromer-Galley, assistant professor, presented papers at a number of conferences in 2017. At the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems, she presented, “Leveraging Complementary Contributions of Different Workers for Efficient Crowdsourcing of Video Captions” (with doctoral students Yifeng Huang and Na Xue and Jeffrey Bigham); and “Free to Fly in Public Spaces: Drone Controllers Privacy Perceptions and Practices” (authored with doctoral students Yaxing Yao and Huichuan Xia and Assistant Professor Yang Wang). At the ACM Conference on ComputerSupported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, Huang contributed: “Privacy Mechanisms for Drones: Perceptions of Drone Controllers and Bystanders” (with doctoral student Yao, Assistant Professor Wang and Lo Re); “Human Library: Understanding Experience Sharing as a Participatory Service” (with doctoral students Dobreski and Huichuan Xia; “Applying Motivational Design to Support Informal Learning of Universal Design for Web Applications” with Dobreski; “Folk Models of Online Behavioral Advertising” (with Yao, Lo Re and Wang); and “Applying Motivational Design to Support Informal Learning of Universal Design for Web Applications” (with Yao, Lo Re and Wang.) At the Collective Intelligence Conference 2017, Huang presented, “BandCaption: Crowdsourcing Video Caption Corrections” (with doctoral students Qunfang Wu and Youyang Hou). At the 18th Annual International Conference on Digital Governmental Research, Huang offered, “Examining Twitter Mentions Between Police Agencies and Public Users through the Lens of Stakeholder Theory,” (with Wu and Hou). She also presented at iConference 2017, with “Applying Motivational Design to Support Informal Learning of Universal Design for Web Applications” (with Dobreski).

Yun Huang

Barbara Kwasnik, professor, presented a paper in London at the United Kingdom Chapter of the International Society for Knowledge Organization, “Changing Depictions of Persons in Library Practice: Spirits, Pseudonyms, and Human Books,” with doctoral student Brian Dobreski. It was one of two papers selected as Best in Conference and accepted for publication in the society’s journal without further review. (Kwasnik retired at the end of the 2017-2018 academic year.) Megan Oakleaf, associate professor and director of instructional quality, presented at CARLI, the academic library consortium in Illinois, on “Linking Academic Libraries with Student Success: The Environment, The Status Quo, and The Way Forward.”

Joon Park

Joon S. Park, professor, presented at the Comprehensive NOAH (New Technology, Organization, Administration, Human Resources) Framework for IoT on “Cybersecurity Strategy for Home Applications,” a paper written with doctoral student Erica Mitchell. Jeffrey Saltz, associate professor, presented at EEE Big Data on “The Ambiguity of Data Science Team Roles and the Need for a Data Science Workforce Framework,” authored with Nancy Grady. Saltz also spoke at the EEE Big Data event about pair programming within data science teams under the topic, “Does Pair Programming work in a Data Science Context: An Initial Case Study,” written with doctoral student Ivan Shamshurin. Saltz also presented the paper, co-authored with Crowston, “Comparing Data Science Project Management Methodologies Via a Controlled Experiment,” in the proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Bryan Semaan, assistant professor, delivered the keynote address at Dryhootch Wisconsin Warrior Summit 2017 in Milwaukee, “A Human-Centered Vision for Technology (Design) in Service of Veteran and Military Families.” The annual summit is a community-academic partnership dedicated to improving outcomes for veterans across a wide variety of health and mental health issues. continued on page 40   THE iSCHOOL @ SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

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SELECTED CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS, PAPERS AND POSTERS continued from page 39 Semaan also presented at several additional conferences in 2017. At the Association for Computing Machinery CSCW conference, he addressed: “Military Masculinity and the Travails of Transitioning: Disclosure in Social Media,” (written with doctoral students Lauren Britton and Bryan Dosono). His presentation on “Impression Management in High Context Societies: Saving Face with ICT” was offered at the 20th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing. The paper was co-authored with doctoral students Dosono and Britton. He addressed “’Social Watching:’ A Civic Broadcast: Understanding the Effects of Positive Feedback and Other Users’ Opinions,” at the 2017 ACM Conference. In proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2017), his paper (written with Matti Nelimarkka, Antti Salovaara and Giulio Jacucci) focused on “TheoryDriven Collocated CMC: A Study on Collocated Mediated Interaction as a Public Sphere.” Semaan also offered “A Confucian Look at Internet Censorship in China” (authored with Yubo Kou and Bonnie Nardi) in proceedings of the Technical Committee 13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT 2017), Bombay, India (Springer). Jennifer Stromer-Galley, professor, presented papers at a number of conferences in 2017. They include: “Identifying Political Topics in Social Media & Society,” (with iSchool Assistant Professor Jeff Hemsley, Research Associate Patricia Rossini, doctoral student Jerry Robinson, Assistant Professor Bryan Semaan and doctoral student Lauren Bryant) at the 8th International Conference on Social Media & Society. She also appeared on a panel at that event, discussing, “Women in Social Media—Safe and Unsafe Spaces,” based on the paper by doctoral students Feifei Zhang, Lauren Bryant, Yingya Li, Olga Boichak, Sam Jackson; Assistant Professors Hemsley and Semaan and Research Associate Professor Nancy McCracken. Stromer-Galley also presented a short paper there on “Women in Gaming.”

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At the International Communication Association conference in San Diego, StromerGalley discussed “Explaining Trump: Analyzing the Relationship Between Social Media and Mainstream Media Coverage.”

Bryan Semaan

Yang Wang, assistant professor, presented the paper, “The Third Wave? Inclusive Privacy and Security” at the New Security Paradigms Workshop at the 2017 ACM Conference in New York. Wang also had a paper, “They Should Be Convenient and Strong: Password Perceptions and Practices of Visually Impaired Users” (with doctoral student Bryan Dosono and Jordon Hayes) presented at the 2017 iConference in Wuhan, China.

POSTERS Kevin Crowston

Carlos Caicedo, associate professor, presented a poster, “A Standard Method for Modelling Spectrum Consumption,” at the March IEEE International Symposium on Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks. (DySPAN). Co-authors are Anthony Rennier, Alex Lackpour, Reinhard Schrage, John A. Stine, Matthew Sherman and Miexzyslaw Kokar. Rachel Ivy Clarke, assistant professor, displayed two posters at the American Library Association annual conference in Chicago in 2017: “Timeline of the Far Future of Libraries” and “Where Do Librarians Come From? Examining Educational Diversity in Librarianship.” Clarke presented three posters at the 2017 Association for Library and Information Science Education conference: “It’s Not Rocket Library Science: Design Epistemology and American Librarianship;” “Design Topics in Graduate Library Education: A Preliminary Investigation” and “More Than Form and Function: Developing a Design Course for Graduate Library Education.” Kevin Crowston, assistant dean for research, presented two posters at the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing in Portland, Ore. They were: “Gravity Spy: Humans, Machines and the Future of Citizen Science” (with the Gravity Spy team) and “Recruiting Messages Matter:


Message Strategies to Attract Citizen Scientists,” (with Tae Kyoung Lee, Associate Professor Carsten Oesterlund, and Grant Miller).

New Faculty

Caroline Haythornthwaite, professor, presented a poster, “Crisis on Twitter: Information & Emotion,” at the 8th International Conference on Social Media and Society Conference in Toronto.

Radhika Garg joined the iSchool’s tenure-track faculty in August 2017 as assistant professor. She received her Ph.D. and Master of Science degrees in computer science from the University of Zurich in Switzerland and her bachelor of technology in computer science from the Mody Institute of Technology in Rajasthan, India. Before coming to Syracuse, Garg worked as a junior researcher for the Communications Systems Group at the University of Zurich. Her research interests include information science, economics and the impact of regulation on public policy, business decisions, deployment and operation and maintenance of network and communication technology. She plans to continue to explore the design, development and application of novel analytical decision systems (including information and user modeling for understanding complex technologies and their ecosystems) in the areas of healthcare, technology, network and service management and energy. Garg says she enjoys the iSchool’s interdisciplinary culture and the collaboration it permits with faculty, staff and students on projects related to decisions made by users and organizations regarding emerging technologies. She has been teaching the iSchool’s graduate-level Cloud Management course (IST 600).

Jeff Hemsley, assistant professor, had three poster presentations at the 8th International Conference on Social Media & Society. He offered: “Automated Diffusion? Bots and Their Influence During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election,” “#digitalnomad v. #remotework: Exploring Trends in Mobile Work on Twitter” and “Microcelebrity Practices: Towards CrossPlatform Studies through a Richness Framework.” Megan Oakleaf, associate professor, displayed a research poster titled “3,000 Library Users Can’t Be Wrong: Using One Open-Ended Survey Question to Demonstrate Your Library’s Value” at the Association of College and Research Libraries conference. Research partners were Jackie Belanger and Maggie Faber of the University of Washington. Lu Xiao, associate professor, presented these papers at conferences in 2017: “Writing To Persuade: Analysis and Detection of Persuasive Discourse,” written with Taranek Khazaei and Robert Mercer, presented in the proceedings of the iConference 2017 in Wuhan, China “Incorporating Values Sensitive Design Into Crowdsourcing Methodologies for Knowledge Collaboration” (in Proceedings of the 80th Annual Meeting of Association for Information Science and Technology; written with Annie Chen, Samantha Kaplan and Pamella Lach)

Radhika Garg

“The Message’s Persuasive Power in Online Discussions” (published in Proceedings from the 2017 International Conference of Deliberation and Decision Making in June in Singapore, and written with Taranek Khazaei and Robert Mercer).

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Selected Media Mentions Jeff Hemsley, assistant professor, was quoted in articles in a number of national media outlets in 2017. They included: “The Internet Made ‘Fake News’ a Thing—Then Made It Nothing” (in Wired.com of February 25); “Beyond #BlackTwitter: A Social Media Community Uncovered” (Medium, August 15) and “How do Facebook Ads Target You?” (USA Today, November 7). He also was quoted in the September 22 Business Insider in the article, “ ‘There’s No One for RightWingers to Pick a Fight With’: The Far Right is Struggling to Sustain Interest In Its Social Media Platforms,” and in CitizenAuburnPub regarding his talk at the Skaneateles, N.Y. , public library on tackling the ‘fake news’ phenomenon. Jill Hurst-Wahl, associate professor of practice, addressed the emerging trend of “library deserts” in the U.S. (places that don’t have a public library within a reasonable distance), for the podcast series, “Beyond the Book,” hosted by the Copyright Clearance Center. She discussed how libraries should be more visible and be moved to community centers where people congregate and have extra time to prompt book borrowing. The episode is archived on the podcast website. Carlos Caicedo, associate professor, had an opinion piece, “Big Data and the Changing Role of the IT Professional,” published in the June 2017 issue of Information Management magazine. Jennifer Stromer-Galley, professor, was interviewed on BYU Radio for the March 2 story, “Social Media and Politics.” She discussed the negativity levels of various candidates’ tweets and highlighted the School of Information Studies’ research on that topic in its “Illuminating 2016” project.

“[Facebook is] so good at being a business, but really bad at recognizing its role in society. There are dimensions and aspects of Facebook no one is paying attention to. If they can’t start getting on top of these problems, they’re going to start getting regulated.” JENNIFER STROMER-GALLEY, PROFESSOR IN THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

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“Here’s where fit comes in. While one person might hate cleaning windows, another might enjoy the autonomy, being outside, the physicality.” JEFFREY M. STANTON, PROFESSOR IN MEDICAL MARKETING & MEDIA

Ruth Small, Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor and director of the Center for Digital Literacy, was quoted in a story in the March 17 Syracuse Post-Standard, “Trump Budget Creates ‘Existential Crisis’ for Syracuse Arts Organizations.” She noted how the Institute of Museum and Library Services has awarded her more than a dozen grants since 2003 that support library and information research of a national scope and the tuition and work of more than 100 students. Carlos Caicedo, associate professor, was interviewed for Syracuse TV station WSYR’s March 22 report, “SU Launches Master’s Program for Managing Cloud Computing.” He discussed how the School of Information Studies is creating one of the first master’s programs in the country to teach students to manage cloud servers. Jennifer Stromer-Galley, professor, was quoted in a June 30 ABC News (Australia) story, “Donald Trump Lashes TV Host with Insulting Tweet,” in a discussion of Trump’s unpredictable social media behavior. Jason Dedrick, professor, was quoted by the Denver Post in a July 25 article, “Trump says Apple CEO Has Promised to Build 3 Plants in U.S.” In that piece, Dedrick referenced his view that forcing the company to shift to U.S. manufacturing could present it with a competitive disadvantage and potentially risk losing some high-paying Apple marketing and engineering jobs. Rachel Clarke, assistant professor, cited Pew Research data showing that it is the Millennial generation, more than others, that appears to have the most use for physical libraries in a story in the July 29 edition of Quartz, “Millennials Are The Ones Keeping Libraries Alive.”

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F A C U LT Y & S T U D E N T N O T E S


Jeffrey Stanton, professor, was interviewed by New York magazine in “Working From Home Is (… Probably) Not Ruining Your Social Skills.” In the August 2 article, he discussed how improved communication tools make it easier for remote workers to stay connected for important work relationships despite separate physical locations. Bahram Attaie, assistant professor of practice, was interviewed for the August 2 International Business Times article, “HBO Hack: Data Breach Worse than Sony Attacks, Full Episodes Stolen.”Attaie discussed his belief that there is a broad spectrum of motivations for hackers.

Lee McKnight, associate professor, was quoted in the November 28 issue of Information Management. His comments appeared in the story, “World’s Biggest Bitcoin Exchange Launches in U.S. as Currency Nears $10K.” McKnight also was quoted in a story in Forbes, “Bitcoin Frenzy Sees Price Top $16,000 Before Losing 20% In Roller Coaster.” The article appeared on December 8. He also was quoted in story in American Banker on December 22, “Four Perspectives on Bitcoinmania.”

[For hackers], there is a broad spectrum [of motivation] from monetary gain to boasting rights.” BAHRAM ATTAIE, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES

Lee McKnight, associate professor, was quoted in a U.S. News & World Report story on August 10, “Will Partnering With Amazon.com Save Retailers?,” regarding the trend of traditional retailers. McKnight also was interviewed by NPR for the August 25 story, “Whole Foods Will Drop Prices On Monday, Amazon Says In Detailing New Grocery Strategy.”

“Many of those investing/speculating in the Bitcoin market are calling it digital gold—a commodity—that is as a way to store value.” LEE MCKNIGHT, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR IN FORBES

Jennifer Stromer-Galley, professor and director of the Center for Computational and Data Sciences, was quoted by the Los Angeles Times September 25 in, “Mark Zuckerberg Built Facebook Into a Behemoth Whose Power He Underestimates.” She commented about Facebook’s ability to recognize the company’s role in society. ARTISTEER/iSTOCKPHOTO BY GETTY IMAGES

Jeffrey Stanton, professor, was quoted in a September 25 article in Medical Marketing & Media titled “Healthcare Agencies Re-Evaluate Tactics to Retain Talent.” He discussed workplace qualities that encourage employees to stay in their jobs.

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2017 Ph.D. Placements

Fatima EspinozaVasquez

Lauren Britton

Dane Dell

Naybell Hernandez

Fatima Espinoza-Vasquez

Espinoza-Vasquez accepted a tenure-track assistant professor position at the School of Information Science at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. She started there in August 2017.

Lauren Britton

Britton became an assistant professor focused on emerging media in the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College, Ithaca New York. She began that position in August 2017.

Dane Dell

Dell joined the Onondaga County Public Library system in Syracuse, New York, as director of library information systems.

Naybell Hernandez

Hernandez is an adjunct lecturer at Utica College in Utica, New York, where she teaches in the college’s Computer Science department.

David James

Gabriel Mugar

Susan Rothwell

Gabriel Mugar

Mugar is a research associate and affiliate faculty member for the Engagement Lab at Emerson College in Boston. As a researcher and project manager specializing in civic media, he coordinates a national study on civic media innovation and supports the faculty cohort for Boston Civic Media. His research interests also include community informatics and both online and offline instances of commons-based peer production.

Susan Rothwell

Rothwell is a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Physics and Astronomy at the Rochester Institute of Technology’s College of Science in Rochester, New York. She is working on a National Science Foundation-funded education research project investigating STEM workforce development and 21st-century skills from the perspectives of faculty, students, employees and employers.

David James

James became an assistant professor for the Computer and Information Sciences faculty at Spellman College in Atlanta, Georgia. His appointment was effective August 2018.

The iSchool Ph.D. Program Our doctoral program (Ph.D. in information science and technology) is innovative and interdisciplinary. We have several specialized in-house research labs and projects that take place across SU’s schools, with other universities and with scholars around the globe. Find out more about our curriculum, learning outcomes, recruiting faculty and how to apply at: ischool.syr.edu/phd.

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Doctoral Student Recognitions, Papers and Presentations HONORS AND ACCOLADES Jasy Liew Suet Yan, a 2016 graduate of the doctoral program, accepted runner-up honors from the iSchools Organization’s 2016 doctoral dissertation prize competition. The recognition was presented at the 2017 iSchools conference in China. Her dissertation was titled, “FineGrained Emotion Detection in Microblog Text.” She now serves as a senior lecturer at the School of Computer Sciences at the University of Science in Malaysia. Bryan Dosono was awarded a SIGCHI travel grant, a sponsorship for him to attend and present at the ACM 2017 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing in Portland, Ore. He presented his paper, “Impression Management in High Context Societies: ‘Saving Face’ with ICT,” written with Bryan Semaan and Lauren Britton. The paper was published in the CSCW ‘17 conference proceedings.

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS AND PUBLISHED PAPERS Natã Barbosa presented a workshop on “Designing TaskOriented Text Commands for Screen Readers and Screen Magnifiers” at the 2017 SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, in conjunction with Assistant Professor Yang Wang. Barbosa also was a presenter at the Great Lakes Security Day in Rochester, New York and at the 2017 Workshop on Ubiquitous Text Interaction at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI2017) held in Denver. He also earned a 2017 Summer Research Award from the iSchool at Syracuse University. Olga Boichak, a Syracuse University Maxwell School doctoral student and member of the iSchool’s Illuminating 2016 Project, presented her paper, “Battlefront Volunteers: Mapping And Deconstructing Platform-Enabled Civilian Resilience Networks in Ukraine,” at the 8th International Conference on Social Media and Society. She also presented a poster there, “Automated Diffusion? Bots and Their Influence During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election,” (composed with doctoral students Sikana Tanupabrungsun and Daniela Fernandez Espinosa and Assistant Professor Jeff Hemsley.)

Sarah Bratt had her presentation, “Translation in Personal Crises: Opportunities for Wearables Design,” appear in the proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management. Co-authors were Bryan Semaan, Lauren Britton, Bryan Dosono and Frano Zeno. Bratt also had her paper, “Toward an Open Data Repository and Meta-Analysis of Cognitive Data Using fNIRS Studies of Emotion,” published in the proceedings of HCII 2017, International Conference on Augmented Cognition. She also had her article, “Big Data, Big Metadata, and Quantitative Study of Science: A Workflow Model for Big Scientometrics,” with co-authors Jeff Hemsley, Jian Qin and Mark Costa published in the journal of the proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) Conference 2017.

Jasy Liew Suet Yan

Lauren Britton had her paper, “Manifesting the Cyborg through Techno-Body Modification: From Human-Computer Interaction to Integration,” included in proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2017). Co-author was Assistant Professor Bryan Semaan.

Bryan Dosono

Brian Dobreski had his paper, co-authored with Barbara Kwasnik, professor, chosen as Best in Conference and accepted for publication in the journal of the International Society for Knowledge Organization without further review. It was presented in London at the United Kingdom chapter of the organization. The paper is titled, “Changing Depictions of Persons in Library Practice: Spirits, Pseudonyms, and Human Books.” Dobreski also presented a paper at the 8th International Conference on Social Media and Society in Toronto, “Applying Motivational Design to Support Informal Learning of Universal Design for Web Applications.” Co-author is Assistant Professor Yun Huang.

Brian Dobreski

Bryan Dosono was published for “Exploring AAPI Identity Online: Political Ideology as a Factor Affecting Identity Work on Reddit,” in proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference in Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM. The work was in conjunction with Assistant Professors Bryan Semaan and Jeff Hemsley. Dosono’s paper was presented at the iConference 2017 in Wuhan, China. Titled, “They Should Be Convenient and Strong: Password Perceptions and Practices of Visually Impaired Users,” its co-authors are Jordan Hayes continued on page 46   THE iSCHOOL @ SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

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DOCTORAL STUDENTS RECOGNITIONS, PAPERS AND PRESENTATIONS continued from page 45 Jennifer Sonne presented a poster at the 8th International Conference on Social Media and Society in Toronto, “Crisis on Twitter: Information, Emotion and Political Content,” (co-authors Professor Caroline Haythornthwaite, Swati Nibban and Yingya Li). Sonne also presented the poster, ‘A Study of Diffusion in the Dribble Art World,” (completed with Assistant Professor Jeff Hemsley and students Sikana Tanupabrungsun, Suchitra Deekshitula and Yihan Yu) at that conference.

Jordan Hayes presented his paper, “They Should Be Convenient and Strong: Password Perceptions and Practices of Visually Impaired Users,” at the Preliminary Papers 9: Knowledge Creation, Qualitative Methods session of the international iConference in Wuhan, China. Co-authors are Brian Dosono and Assistant Professor Yang Wang.

Sikana Tanupabrungsun attended the 8th International Conference on Social Media and Society, presenting the poster, “Call to Retweet: Negotiated Diffusion of Strategic Political Messages.” Co-authors are: Assistant Professors Jeff Hemsley and Brian Semaan. Tanupabrungsun also co-presented posters there on the topics: “A Study of Diffusion in the Dribble Art World” (with Hemsley, Suchitra Deekshitula, Jennifer Sonne and Yihan Yu); “Automated Diffusion? Bots and Their Influence during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election” (with Olga Boichak, Daniela Fernandez Espinosa and Hemsley) and “Microcelebrity Practices: Towards Cross-Platform Studies through a Richness Framework” (with Hemsley).

Sam Jackson, a Syracuse University Maxwell School doctoral student involved in the iSchool’s Illuminating 2016 Project, presented his work, “Identifying Political Topics In Social Media Messages: A Lexicon-Based Approach,” at the 8th International Conference on Social Media and Society. He wrote the paper with co-authors Feifei Zhang, Olga Boichak, Jeff Hemsley, Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Bryan Semaan, Nancy McCracken, Lauren Bryant and Yingya Li.

Ph.D. student J.P. Rancy presents his research at an iSchool poster session.

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and Assistant Professor Yang Wang. Another of his papers, “Applying Motivational Design to Support Informal Learning of Universal Design for Web Applications,” was included in the Preliminary Papers 2: Information Behaviors and HCI track session of the 8th International Conference on Social Media and Society. Dosono also presented at an invited talk at the University of Pittsburgh iSchool Inclusion Institute on the topic, “Exploring Asian American and Pacific Islander Identity Work on Reddit.”


Post-Doctoral Researchers: Honors, Presentations and Papers

Yaxing Yao (with co-authors Huichuan Xia and Assistant Professors Yun Huang and Yang Wang) had his paper, “Free to Fly in Public Spaces: Drone Controllers’ Privacy Perceptions and Practices,” published in the May 2017 edition of the proceedings of the ACM 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Yao also had his works, “Privacy Mechanisms for Drones: Perceptions of Drone Controllers and Bystanders in the U.S.” (with Yun Huang and Yang Wang) appear in the proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (CHI2017). His paper, “Folk Models of Online Behavioral Advertising,” (with David Lo Re and Yang Wang) appeared in the proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2017).

Patricia Rossini, research associate, presented her paper, “Public Comments and Uncivil Discourse in the 2016 U.S. President Election” (written with Sam Jackson, Feifei Zhang, Bryan Semaan, Jennifer Stromer-Galley and Kate Kenski) at the 18th annual meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers in October in Estonia. Rossini also presented a paper she authored (with Jackson, Zhang, Stromer-Galley, Lauren Brant and Kate Kenski) at the International Communication Association annual conference in San Diego in May. It was titled, “Disrupting Controlled Interctivity? An Analysis of Public Comments on Facebook in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign.”

Patricia Rossini

Yatish Hegde, research analyst, had a paper he co-authored, “CORA: A Platform to Support Citation Context Analysis” (written with faculty member Bei Yu and doctoral student Yingya Li) named winner of the “Most Interesting Preliminary Results Paper award for the iSchools Organization’s iConference 2017. Yatish Hegde

Feifei Zhang (with Sikana Tanupabrungsun, Jeff Hemsley, Jerry Lamont Robinson, Bryan Semaan, Lauren Bryant, Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Olga Boichak, and Yatish Hegde) presented “Strategic Temporality On Social Media During the General Election of the 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign” at the 8th International Conference on Social Media and Society in Toronto. Zhang also had her paper, “Understanding Discourse Acts: Political Campaign Messages Classification on Facebook and Twitter,” published in the proceedings of the International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling and Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation. Co-authors are Jennifer StromerGalley, Sikana Tanupabrungsun, Yatish Hedgde, Nancy McCracken and Jeff Hemsley.   THE iSCHOOL @ SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

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F A C U LT Y & S T U D E N T N O T E S

Master’s and Undergraduate Student Workshop and Poster Presentations Daniela Fernandez Espinosa presented a poster at the 2017 International Conference on Social Media and Society, “Twitter Users’ Privacy Concerns: What do Their Accounts’ First Names Tell Us?” It was written with Associate Professor Lu Xiao. Suchitra Deekshitula presented a preconference workshop, “Social Media Data Bootcamp and Research Hackathon” (along with Libby Hemphill, Richard Rogers, Sikana Tanupabrungsun and Assistant Professor Jeff Hemsley) at the 2017 Association of Internet Researchers Conference in Estonia. Deekshitula also presented a poster, ‘A Study of Diffusion in the Dribble Art World,” (with Jeff Hemsley, Sikana Tanupabrungsun, Jennifer Sonne and Yihan Yu) at the 2017 International Conference on Social Media and Society. Alexis Ho-Liu, an undergraduate student, presented the poster, “Understanding ESL Adults’ Decisions in Mobile Communication Apps: Towards the Development of an Inclusive App” at the 2017 iConference in Wuhan, China. Swati Nibban presented a poster at the 2017 International Conference on Social Media and Society in Toronto. Titled, “Crisis on Twitter: Information, Emotion and Political Content,” its co-authors are Professor Caroline Haythornthwaite, Yingya Li and Jennifer Sonne. Yihan Yu had her poster, “A Study of Diffusion in the Dribble Art World,” (completed with Assistant Professor Jeff Hemsley and students Sikana Tanupabrungsun, Suchitra Deekshitula and Jennifer Sonne) presented at the 2017 International Conference on Social Media and Society.

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THE iSCHOOL @ SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

Undergraduate student Alexis Ho-Liu in Wuhan, China, where he presented at the 2017 iConference.


Research Speakers and Visitors The following invited researchers and guests came to the School of Information Studies during 2017 to speak with faculty, staff and students. Jos Aarts, Ph.D., fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and associate professor in biomedical informatics at the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University of Buffalo, “Designing for Medication Safety: A Sociotechnical Perspective on Medication Reconciliation,” October 6. Dr. Ofer Bergman, Ph.D., associate professor, Department of Information Studies, Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv, Israel; and Steve Whittaker, Ph.D., professor of human computer interaction, University of Southern California, Santa Cruz, “The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff,” March 30. Sean P. Goggins, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science and director of the Data Science and Analytics Master’s Program at the University of Missouri, “Computational Intelligence Pipelines: Imagination and Reality,” January 31. Joseph A. Konstan, Ph.D., distinguished McKnight professor and distinguished university teaching professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota, “Recom­mender Systems: Beyond Machine Learning,” October 3. Yoel Roth, API policy lead and senior product trust program manager, Trust and Safety operations, Twitter,“Swiping Left: Personalization and the Politics of Online Dating,” April 25. Daniel Russell, Ph.D., research scientist and Uber tech lead for quality and user happiness at Google, presenting “In the Library of the Future,” November 8.

Jodi Upton, professor of newspaper and online journalism and Knight Chair in data and explanatory journalism, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, “What Data Journalism Is,” October 27.

Jos Aarts, Ph.D.

James M. Walker, M.D., FACP, chief health information officer, Siemens Healthcare, “The Patient’s Care Team: Its Complexity, With Implications for Care-System Re-Design and Information Systems,” November 3. Richard (Rick) Watson, Regents professor and J. Rex Fuqua distinguished chair of internet strategy at the Terry College of Business, University of Georgia, “An Information Systems Perspective on Sustainability,” December 1.

INVITED PRESENTERS Rebekah Tromble, Ph.D.

Melissa Adler, Ph.D., assistant professor at University of Western Ontario, presented a Syracuse symposium talk December 4 on “Consequences of Classification: Systemic Violence Against Marginalized Communities.” In a workshop the next day, she focused on taxonomic repair work. Adler’s research concerns the history of library classifications as they intersect with state and cultural discourses about race and sexuality.

iSCHOOL PRESENTERS Yatish Hegde, research staff member, Center for Computational and Data Sciences, School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, “Improving Your Research through Development of IT Artifacts,” September 29.

Zachary O. Toups, Ph.D., assistant professor of computer science, New Mexico State University, “The Collecting Itself Feels Good,” September 19. Rebekah Tromble, Ph.D., visiting scholar in the iSchool’s Center for Computational and Data Sciences and assistant professor, Institute of Political Science, Leiden University, the Netherlands, “API Bias: Preliminary Insights Into the Impact of Twitter Data Collection on Scientific Inference,” March 23.

THE iSCHOOL @ SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY

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Articles inside

Research Speakers and Visitors

2min
pages 51-52

Post-Doctoral Papers and Honors

1min
page 49

Master’s, Undergraduate Honors

1min
page 50

Doctoral Research and Recognitions

4min
pages 47-48

Selected Media Mentions

4min
pages 44-45

Presentations, Papers and Posters

10min
pages 40-43

Ph.D. Placements

1min
page 46

Books, Book Chapters, Journal Articles

5min
pages 36-37

Leadership Awards and Accolades

5min
pages 34-35

Keynotes, Panels and Workshops

4min
pages 38-39

Appreciating Scholar Guests

3min
pages 32-33

New Awards

9min
pages 28-31

Communities Grant

2min
page 24

SALT: Supporting the Use of Tech

6min
pages 25-27

Finding Funding and Collaborators: ‘EILEEN

5min
pages 20-21

SMART GRID: Project Center

4min
pages 22-23

METADATA: Analytics and Modeling

2min
page 19

Drone Privacy Study Earns NYS Revitalization Grant

2min
page 11

Nudging, Structured Techniques

3min
pages 16-17

How ICTs Can Ease Difficult Life Transitions

2min
page 18

IMLS Project Expands Research Into Children’s Innovation Processes

4min
pages 6-7

Political Messaging

3min
pages 14-15

New Tool Simulates Drone Traffic

2min
page 10

CCDS: Center for Computational and Data Sciences

4min
pages 12-13

CENT: Center for Emerging Network Technologies

5min
pages 8-9
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