Discovering Vulnerabilities in a Sociotechnical Society

danah boyd, Ph.D.
Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, Founder and President of Data & Society, and Visiting Professor at New York University
April 2018

Data-driven and algorithmic systems increasingly underpin many decision-making systems, shaping where law enforcement are stationed and what news you are shown on social media. The design of these systems is inscribed with organizational and cultural values. Often, these systems depend on the behavior of everyday people, who may not act as expected. Meanwhile, adversarial actors also seek to manipulate the data upon which these systems are built for personal, political, and economic reasons. In this talk, danah boyd will unpack some of the unique cultural challenges presented by “big data” and machine learning, raising critical questions about fairness and accountability. She will describe how those who are manipulating media for lulz are discovering the attack surfaces of new technical systems and how their exploits may undermine many aspects of society that we hold dear. Above all, she will argue that we need to develop more sophisticated ways of thinking about technology before jumping to hype and fear.

When Computers Get Access to Your Emotions

Professor Rosalind W. Picard, Sc.D
Founder and Director of the Affective Computing Research Group, MIT
November 2017

Computers, robots, and wearable technologies are gaining the ability to sense, recognize, and respond intelligently to human emotion. This talk by Professor Rosalind W. Picard will highlight several important findings made at MIT, including surprises about the “true smile of happiness,” new ways cameras (and your smartphone, even in your handbag) can compute your bio-signals without using any new sensors, and finding electrical signals on the wrist that reveal insight into deep brain activity, with implications for autism, anxiety, epilepsy, and more. What is the grand challenge we aim to solve next?

Living in Media: Psychological Implications of the Fragmentation and Mediatization of Life

Dr. Byron Reeves
Paul C. Edwards Professor of Communication, Stanford University
April 2017

Much of life is now experienced digitally on just a few ubiquitous devices, via interfaces that enable lightning fast switches between radically different content, and with affordances that make it simple for anyone—individuals, social groups, companies, governments—to aggregate, archive, search, analyze, and publish everything. One device can be used for email and texting, shopping and finances, business and social relationships, work spreadsheets and writing, entertainment TV, news, movies and games, and monitoring personal information about health, exercise, energy, appliances, driving, and even home irrigation. The variety of human experiences available digitally will continue to grow as more and more items—from refrigerators to shoes to car parts—get their own IP addresses that link them to the so-called “internet of things.” This talk by Dr. Byron Reeves will explore several different psychological implications of living in media including the fragmentation of experience, quick task switching between different experiences, and new interdependency between domains of life typically viewed as separate experiences.

The Theory of Planned Behavior: Focus on Persuasion

Dr. Icek Ajzen
Professor of Psychology Emeritus, University of Massachusetts
November 2016

Dr. Icek Ajzen (Professor of Psychology Emeritus, University of Massachusetts) describes his work on the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and its use as a cohesive framework for understanding and predicting behavior and designing effective behavior change interventions. The failure of many attempts at behavior change is traced to a poor understanding of the behavior’s determinants and insufficient formative research in preparation for the intervention. A systematic approach based on the TPB is described and its correct application as well as its misapplication are discussed. Data are presented to illustrate the theory’s potential for enabling successful prediction and change of behavior.

Why I Study Emotion and You Should Too: A Call for More Innovative Integration of Emotion into Mediated Communication Research

Dr. Robin Nabi
Professor of Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara
April 2016

The study of emotion in media-based communication contexts has been largely limited to the study of fear appeals and mood management. Yet there are a multitude of ways in which emotion may be productively integrated into our thinking about message design and effects. Dr. Robin Nabi will introduce three novel approaches to the study of emotion in media contexts.

New Methods for Assessing Communication Influence: Linking Biobehavior and Big Data in a Social Media Era

Erik Bucy
Marshall and Sharleen Formby Regents Professor of Strategic Communication in the College of Media and Communication, Texas Tech University
November 2015

In recent years, scholars of strategic communication have been turning to biologically based measures for increased precision, including the use of real-time measures of viewer response, biobehavioral coding of facial displays and other nonverbal communication repertoires, and measurement of vocalic variations, among others. This talk by Dr. Erik Bucy summarizes how biobehavioral measures can be gainfully employed in political communication research across a variety of contexts, including candidate behavior during televised debates, viewer attention to inappropriate expressive displays, tests of the relative influence of verbal vs. nonverbal communication on “second screen” behavior (Twitter messaging), and the capacity of voice inflection and tone to draw attention to issues. Methodological aspects of this research and techniques for merging discrete datasets to enable relationship testing are discussed as well.

Visualizing Instagram: How to Study Big Social Data Without Using Numbers

Dr. Lev Manovich
Professor at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and a Director of the Software Studies Initiative
April 2015

What can we learn about societies from analyzing billions of photographs and videos shared on social networking sites? How can analysis of big data focus on the variability and differences as opposed to the aggregation of data? Can we use interactive visualization to explore massive visual data sets without using numbers or predefined research questions? In this presentation, Dr. Lev Manovich will discuss these questions using examples of recent projects in his team’s lab where they analyze 2.3 million Instagram photos from 13 global cities (http://phototrails.net), compare selfies (http://selfiecity.net/), and create an interactive visualization of a city life that does not use any maps (on-broadway.nyc).

Processing Ethically Strong vs. Problematic TV Commercials

Dr. Esther Thorson
Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Research at the Missouri School of Journalism, and Director of Research for the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute
October 2014

Television commercials, even in a digital world, continue to absorb lots of advertising dollars and be highly salient for Americans. Some commercials, especially those whose focus is public service, achieve a high standard of ethical value—and we love to say they impact us. But many commercials violate ethical standards, for example, those that use sexualization of women to sell products like fast food and bottled water, and those that connect products like soft drinks or jeans with extremely dangerous behavior. How do young adults respond to commercials that are clearly ethically and even culturally problematic? How does this compare to their response to public service announcements? The results of this presentation by Dr. Esther Thorson may surprise you.

Crossing the Divide of Digital Divide Research

Dr. Ronald E. Rice
Arthur N. Rupe Chair in the Social Effects of Mass Communication in the Department of Communication, Department Chair, and Co-Director of the Carsey-Wolf Center, at University of California, Santa Barbara
April 2014

Dr. Ronald E. Rice examines how the concept and research surrounding the ‘digital divide’ are broadening as new forms of digital equality are identified both in the U.S. and abroad.

Interactive Media Effects: How Technology Shapes our Psychology

Dr. S. Shyam Sundar
Distinguished Professor and Founding Director of the Media Effects Research Laboratory in the College of Communications at Penn State University
October 2013

Worried about how attached we’ve become to our mobile devices, how addicted we are to the internet, and how obsessed we are with our social networks? Don’t be. It’s how you interact with these emergent media that matters. They can actually be good for you!

This talk by Dr. S. Shyam Sundar will reveal the reasons why online interactivity is so alluring, and discuss the various ways in which specific features of media technology shape our psychology.

From Symbolism to Strategy: A Personal Intellectual History of Public Relations Theory

James E. Grunig
Professor Emeritus, Department of Communication, University of Maryland
April 2013

In the minds of most people, public relations has become institutionalized as what James E. Grunig calls the symbolic interpretive paradigm—the idea that public relations consists of disseminating messages to influence how people interpret the behaviors of organizations. Grunig has devoted his career to developing an alternative paradigm, which he calls the strategic management paradigm—the idea that public relations is an essential part of management that gives a voice to publics in management decisions and helps shape the behaviors of organizations rather than just the meanings that publics assign to those behaviors. In his presentation, Grunig will discuss the development of his research from the nature of publics to models that describe how organizations practice public relations, the evaluation of public relations, and the merging of these theories into the Excellence theory of how the most successful organizations practice public relations.

In Your Face Politics: Television and the Intensification of Political Emotions

Dr. Diana C. Mutz
Samuel A. Stouffer Professor of Political Science and Communication and Director of the Institute for the Study of Citizens and Politics, University of Pennsylvania
October 2012

Is the way Americans experience politicians and political conflict different now from how it was in the past? Drawing on a series of experimental and survey studies, Dr. Diana C. Mutz illuminates the consequences of incivility and the unique visual perspective of televised politics. Her findings have implications for understanding the strong emotions that can be aroused by contemporary politicians.

Do the Media Tell Us What to Think About? The Psychology of Agenda Setting

Dr. Maxwell McCombs
Professor and Jesse H. Jones Chair of Communications, School of Journalism in College of Communication, University of Texas at Austin
April 2012

The contemporary communication landscape confronts us with a vast deluge of information. To cope with this situation, individuals ignore or quickly forget most of these messages. One of the principal attributes identified by agenda-setting theory for those bits of information that do have lasting impact is their relevance. Although relevance was introduced as a key component of need for orientation in 1972 and is widely documented as a key predictor of agenda-setting effects, a major trend in current research is the further explication of what makes an issue or other topic in the news relevant to an individual. Personal values and beliefs, emotional responses to the news, civic duty, and self-interest are all part of the emerging theoretical gestalt that explains agenda-setting effects in greater detail, as discussed in this presentation by Dr. Maxwell McCombs.

              

Digital Journalism: Framing Transformation and Understanding Impact

Dr. Stephen Lacy
Associate Dean for Graduate Studies and Professor in the Department of Communication and School of Journalism, College of Communication Arts and Sciences, Michigan State University
October 2011

This presentation by Dr. Stephen Lacy explores some of the frames surrounding the transformation of journalism from analog to digital delivery and the potential impact of this transformation on the political information process. Special emphasis will be given to the implication of interactive media and the 2012 elections.