Computational Social Science Seminar: David Lazer, Northeastern University
The National Internet Observatory
Abstract
The National Internet Observatory (NIO) is a large-scale, NSF-supported, effort to collect data on what people in the U.S. see and do online, via a browser extension and mobile apps, supplemented by survey data, and then makes those data available to third party researchers via a secure data enclave. I will walk through the need for such a shared research infrastructure, the ethics framework we built around NIO, present a summary of the data that have been collected, the data products that we have built, and how we manage external researcher access. Finally, I will present some initial research findings from NIO.
Link to the National Internet Observatory.
About the CSS seminar series
The University of Michigan School of Information’s Computational Social Science seminar series brings together a vibrant and diverse community of scholars whose cutting-edge research in information science, computer science and the social sciences aims to broaden our understanding of important social and technological issues.
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Featured Speaker
David Lazer
Northeastern University
David Lazer is a Professor at Northeastern University, and a University of Michigan PhD. He has published widely on topics in computational social science, democratic deliberation, collective intelligence, and misinformation. His research has been published in such journals as Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, the American Political Science Review. He is cofounder and coleader of the Civic Health and Institutions Project (CHIP50), an ongoing 50 state survey evaluating the state of US democracy; lead PI of the National Internet Observatory, a large ($16m) NSF supported data collection/sharing infrastructure designed to support the research on the platforms of the internet; founding board member of the Coalition for Independent Technology Research; co-director of the Institute for Information, the Internet, and Democracy at Northeastern.
Contact: [email protected]