Shadi Rezapour, PhD, Assistant Professor of Information Science, College of Computing & Informatics, Drexel University

Abstract:

Exposure to information sources of different types and modalities, such as social media, movies, scholarly reports and interactions with other communities can change a person’s values as well as their knowledge and attitude toward various social phenomena. This presentation outlines our methods for (1) measuring the impact of different types of information on individuals and (2) analyzing the influence of personal values and socio-cultural contexts on everyday interactions and communication. Our projects leverage natural language processing, machine learning and social network analysis within the field of computational social science to investigate user-generated texts (e.g., social media and customer reviews) and professionally generated texts (e.g., scholarly publications and organizational documents). By examining diverse social contexts and language aspects, we can develop computational models that are more socially aware and human-centered. This talk provides insights and approaches to better understand people’s attitudes toward social events and issues, and improve interpersonal and societal discourse.