Alan Neustadtl - US grants

Computationally-mediated civic participation is emerging as a solution to contemporary problems associated with economic and social issues such as healthcare, energy sustainability, education, environmental protection, and disaster response. The NSF-funded research project conducted by Ben Shneiderman, Alan Neustadtl, and Catherine Plaisant at the University of Maryland will study reasons for successes and failures of the community safety system, Nation of Neighbors. The results will enable interventions to shift the balance towards increasing success. One product of the research will be a computer-based Community Analysis Visualization Environment (CAVE) that will enable community managers to use a visual analytic toolkit to take the pulse of their communities by identifying effective and ineffective components of the community participation program, and will enable researchers to compare large numbers of communities to understand the features that distinguish successful from failing community participation programs. The project will test the four-stage Reader-to-Leader Framework -- which assumes that participation moves from reader to contributor to collaborator to leader, with fewer and fewer participants moving into each subsequent stage -- by studying community manager strategies for coping with the practical challenge of increased participation as well as threatening disruptions caused by external events, malicious attacks, harmful rumors, and disaffected members.

In addition the results will have general implications for many computationally-mediated civic participation systems such as those designed for coping with natural disasters (earthquakes, toxic waste discharges, etc.), medical outbreaks (food poisoning, flu, pandemics, etc.), and human threats (terrorists, serial killers, bombers, arsonists, etc.). The computational tools developed for the project will also be useful to researchers studying community participation networks. The research may also provide useful insights into the working of other types of social networks and might have implications for organizations where information is shared by large numbers of people, such as hospitals and school districts.

This is funding to support a workshop for 20 promising graduate students from the United States whose research covers aspects of Technology-Mediated Social Participation (TMSP). Technology-mediated social participation is generated when social networking tools, blogs and microblogs, user-generated content sites, discussion groups, problem reporting, recommendation systems, and other social media are applied to national priorities such as health, energy, education, disaster response, environmental protection, business innovation, or community safety. Although social media are transforming society, many universities have been slow to integrate these novel technologies and social structures into their curricula and research. Two previous NSF-supported TMSP Workshops have outlined an agenda for research and education in this area, which was published in a serious of journal articles appearing in a special issue of IEEE Computer. To increase research and education in TMSP, this workshop brings together an interdisciplinary group of graduate students to listen to presentations by leaders in the field, learn new research skills, and learn from each other by sharing the diverse research streams that focus on social media.

The TMSP "webshop" will include 20 graduate students from such fields as sociology, anthropology, communications, psychology, journalism and humanities as well as from information studies, information systems, human-computer interaction and computer science. Effort will be taken to ensure gender balance, strong representation from ethnic minority groups, and cross-disciplinarity. Students will apply by submitting a one page statement of why they wish to attend the workshop along with their curriculum vitae. During the three-day workshop, students will attend presentations from an interdisciplinary group of distinguished leaders in the field and engage in other research and community-building activities.

Intellectual Merit: There is a growing recognition that social media technologies can bring profound benefits for national priorities such as disaster response, community safety, health/wellness, energy sustainability, and environmental protection. However substantial research is needed to scale up participation, raise motivation, control malicious attacks, limit misguided rumors, and protect privacy. The TMSP workshop will foster new ideas, tools and theories in this area through intense multidisciplinary discussion. Topics to be covered share (1) a close linkage to compelling national priorities; (2) a scientific foundation based on established theories and well-defined research questions (privacy, reciprocity, trust, motivation, recognition, etc.); and (3) computer science research challenges (security, privacy protection, scalability, visualization, end-user development, distributed data handling, network analysis of community evolution, cross network comparison, etc.).

Broader impacts: The workshop will raise awareness of the importance of technology-mediated social participation as a distinct area of study, foster new interdisciplinary projects, raise the prominence of researchers and educators who are invited to speak, and promote greater understanding of the discipline among leading graduate students across the United States. The workshop will also help new researchers develop relationships with peers and experienced researchers and practitioners. Specific outcomes will include resources such as bibliographies, links to websites, video and slides sets from speakers and carefully crafted lists of courses, conferences, and journals. These resources will be helpful to researchers and educators who seek to expand their work in Technology-Mediated Social Participation.

This is funding to support a workshop for 40 promising graduate students from the United States whose research covers aspects of Technology-Mediated Social Participation (TMSP). Technology-mediated social participation is generated when social networking tools, blogs and microblogs, user-generated content sites, discussion groups, problem reporting, recommendation systems, and other social media are applied to national priorities such as health, energy, education, disaster response, environmental protection, business innovation, or community safety. Although social media are transforming society, many universities have been slow to integrate these novel technologies and social structures into their curricula and research. Two previous NSF-supported TMSP Workshops have outlined an agenda for research and education in this area, which was published in a serious of journal articles appearing in a special issue of IEEE Computer. To increase research and education in TMSP, this workshop brings together an interdisciplinary group of graduate students to listen to presentations by leaders in the field, learn new research skills, and learn from each other by sharing the diverse research streams that focus on social media.

The TMSP "webshop" will include 40 graduate students from such fields as sociology, anthropology, communications, psychology, journalism and humanities as well as from information studies, information systems, human-computer interaction and computer science. Effort will be taken to ensure gender balance, strong representation from ethnic minority groups, and cross-disciplinarity. Students will apply by submitting a one-page statement of why they wish to attend the workshop along with their curriculum vitae. During the three-day workshop, students will attend presentations from an interdisciplinary group of distinguished leaders in the field and engage in other research and community-building activities.

Intellectual Merit: There is a growing recognition that social media technologies can bring profound benefits for national priorities such as disaster response, community safety, health/wellness, energy sustainability, and environmental protection. However substantial research is needed to scale up participation, raise motivation, control malicious attacks, limit misguided rumors, and protect privacy. The TMSP workshop will foster new ideas, tools and theories in this area through intense multidisciplinary discussion. Topics to be covered share (1) a close linkage to compelling national priorities; (2) a scientific foundation based on established theories and well-defined research questions (privacy, reciprocity, trust, motivation, recognition, etc.); and (3) computer science research challenges (security, privacy protection, scalability, visualization, end-user development, distributed data handling, network analysis of community evolution, cross network comparison, etc.).

Broader impacts: The workshop will raise awareness of the importance of technology-mediated social participation as a distinct area of study, foster new interdisciplinary projects, raise the prominence of researchers and educators who are invited to speak, and promote greater understanding of the discipline among leading graduate students across the United States. The workshop will also help new researchers develop relationships with peers and experienced researchers and practitioners. Specific outcomes will include resources such as bibliographies, links to websites, video and slides sets from speakers and carefully crafted lists of courses, conferences, and journals. These resources will be helpful to researchers and educators who seek to expand their work in Technology-Mediated Social Participation.