faculty Q & A
Social media maven
Assistant Professor Jennifer Golbeck Ph.D. ’05 is a computer scientist in the iSchool and co-director of Maryland’s Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory. She’s an expert in analyzing social media: how people use it, how it connects them, and its economic and social impacts. She talked to Terp about how she sneaks her work into hobbies that range from ice hockey to beekeeping. Q. How did you get started in a field that’s so new to academia that it didn’t exist when you were growing up? A. When I was looking in 2001 to get my Ph.D., social networks were this tiny thing. I was interested in the social questions they raised, and people asked me, “Is that really computer science?” But I said that I think this is going to be a big deal. And it turned out that it was.
Q. The Department of Defense has awarded you more than $4 million to research the role social media can play in military intelligence or in training U.S. troops. How does the fast-andloose nature of social media fit with the high-stakes goals of the DoD? A. If you look at troops in a battle situation, that’s exactly how it is. It’s chaotic. Sometimes people are trying to tell you things, and it’s not clear, or it’s wrong. The people higher up in the chain want to filter out the good vs. the bad information.
I’m trying to put some of my understanding of how trust and social networks work—such as considering the sources, and their relationships— to decide what information to trust and how to use it.
Q. You’re also developing a new way for pet lovers to interact with owners online. Why? A. I adore my dogs, and was looking for a way to connect pets with their owners when they’re away. A fellow researcher and I are developing this interface where you have your computer automatically answer your call, and you can interact with your pet by playing sounds, showing images and moving a laser pointer. The dogs come over and start looking at it, and they cock their heads. They just love it. We’re now talking about remote treat dispensers, but we’re not there yet.
renderings courtesy of gensler / illustrations by kelsey marotta
Q. What new trends are you seeing in social media? A. Facebook wants to be the Internet. You find your news, your games, everything there. I now see everything breaking apart. People now go to Pinterest to share their photos or to Twitter to talk about things. I see people looking for more specific services that do a really good job on that one thing rather than a place that will do everything for them.
Q. You have such an eclectic range of interests: renovating your 1940s-era house, competing in triathlons and a men’s hockey league, and tending a bee colony. Beekeeping? A. Bees are social insects. They have all these ways of communicating in the dark, or knowing what they’re supposed to do. It’s just fascinating. The things you use to study bees are the same things you use to study social media interactions.
fall 2012 terp 17