Untangling the Web

For this episode, we talk with Azeem Azhar, an entrepreneur, investor and author. Previously, he founded PeerIndex, a big data analytics firm acquired in 2015. And his first book, “The Exponential Age: How Accelerating Technology is Transforming Business, Politics and Society,” was just published this month.

Azeem was an early user of the Web — he takes us back to those days and tells us about some of the first social media sites. Then, he describes what it was like when platforms like Facebook and Twitter were much more open, which also allowed more data to be collected. But he also brings us to the present, where we live in the “exponential age.” He breaks down exactly what that means and more in this latest episode.

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In this episode, we talk with journalist Rory Cellan-Jones. He's reported for BBC for 40 years, and for much of that time primarily focused on business and technology stories. He has covered everything from smartphones to social media and more. He's just published a new book, which he spoke about at this year's ACM Web Science conference.

For this episode, Rory talks about some of the biggest and best stories of his career at BBC and beyond.  He was there to see this generation's "model Ford" moment, when Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone. And he was the reporter whose question prompted Stephen Hawking to say AI could make humans obsolete. Rory reflects on these moments and what he calls the "social smartphone era" in this episode. Take a listen to hear this and more.

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Our guest for this episode is Pablo Boczkowski, who is Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, as well as the founder and director of the Center for Latinx Digital Media. He’s also the cofounder and the co-director of the Center for the Study of Media and Society in Argentina, and has been a senior research fellow at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society in Berlin, Germany.

In this episode, Pablo discusses his new book “Abundance,” which draws on research in Argentina — and explains why what some people term “information overload” could actually be thought of in less negative terms. He also makes a compelling argument for why studying the global south is a necessity — and why web science should take a more cultural perspective in tandem with technical advancements. To hear his talk about this and more, listen to this episode.

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For this episode, we talk with Taha Yasseri, an associate professor at the School of Sociology and a Geary Fellow at the Geary Institute for Public Policy at University College Dublin, Ireland. He has been a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, a Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute for Data Science and AI, and a Research Fellow at Wolfson College at the University of Oxford.  He is interested in the dynamics of social machines on the Web.

During this episode, Taha tells us all about dating on the Web -- from who initiates conversations (spoiler alert: there's a big gender gap) to what traits people value in a partner. Some of these are age-old questions, answered by new web science methods. And he discusses his research outside of that realm, from people and bots that "fight" on Wikipedia to how the web impacts our "collective memory." To hear to all this and more, listen to this episode.

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In this episode, we talk with Richard Rogers, a professor and chair of New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam. An award-winning author, he also is Director of the Digital Methods Initiative (DMI), known for the development of software tools for the study of online data. He's interested in web epistemology -- and more -- and was co-chair for one of the very first Web Science conferences.

In this episode, Richard digs into "digital methods" and what that really means, as well as the software his team has built to conduct research under the DMI. He brings us into some of his newest work, like the book he's working on called Mainstreaming the Fringe: How Misinformation Propagates in Social Media, but he also goes back to what started his path in web science. And he discusses a number of critical projects that has helped shed light on topics including issue drift and issue celebrities. To understand those terms and more, listen to this episode.

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In this episode, we talk with Sinan Aral, an award-winning researcher, entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He is the David Austin professor of Management, Marketing IT and Data Science at MIT, where he also directs MIT's initiative on the Digital Economy. And in 2020, he published his first book: The Hype Machine.

During this conversation, Sinan gives us a "tour" of the book. He talks about how -- and why -- social media is built to hype us up, as well as how making social platforms interoperabile might just be the key to creating a better hype machine. And he walks us through why fake news travels so fast on social media -- faster than real news, and faster than it ever could even a decade ago. To hear about this and more, give a listen to this episode.

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In this episode, we talk with Matt Weber, a faculty member in the Department of Communication at the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. With more than a decade of experience researching information ecosystems, organizations and communities, Matt focuses on the use of large scale web data to study processes of change. In addition, Matt has been an active member of the web science community. He's the program co-chair for the ACM 2021 Web Science Conference, and delivered a keynote at this year’s conference.

In this episode, Matt explains the process of web archiving, along with some of the questions it enables us to explore. He touches on how his own research, some of which centers on news media production, fits into all this. And he discusses some of the challenges and issues that surround web archiving, as well as pathways to solutions. To hear these insights and more, listen to this episode.

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For this episode, we talk with Emilio Ferrara, an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He's also a Research Team Leader for AI at USC’s Information Sciences Institute and the Director of the Annenberg Networks Network, ANN for short. Earlier this year, Emilio became the Chair of the Web Science Trust Network of Laboratories (WSTNet for short).

In this episode, Emilio discusses his vision for the next generation of Web Science, especially in light of his newly appointed chair position. And he also talks about some of his research into how bots and social media can manipulate conversations around vaccines and public health. He has a particular perspective on this area -- much before COVID-19, he was involved in a DARPA challenge surrounding bots engaged in vaccination debate. Then, in January 2020, right as the pandemic was coming on the horizon, Emilio's lab jumped on collecting data about bots spreading COVID-19 conspiracies. For insights into this and more, listen to this episode.

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Our guest for this episode is Dr. Aleks Krotoski, an award-winning international broadcaster, author and academic. She studies and writes about technology and interactivity. Her book, “Untangling the Web: What the Internet is Doing to You,” based on her hit columns in the Guardian and Observer, was published in 2012. Since then, she’s continued to break ground in academia and journalism, and she’s currently a Visiting Fellow in the Media and Communications Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute.

During this episode, Aleks talks about how our online lives have become entangled with our offline ones. Her research has found that we bring our existing ideas about society to the virtual worlds we build. But unlike in the past, there's less space to play around with our identities online. And, there's more consequences -- for many people, the things they did 10 or 15 years ago still pop up when you search their name. What does that mean for our own growth, and how is the Web evolving, too? To hear all this and more, listen to this episode.

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Our guest for this episode is Munmun De Choudhury, a professor of interactive computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she leads the Social Dynamics and Wellbeing Lab.  Her research centers on using social media to better understand and improve mental health. She draws on an interdisciplinary approach, combining social computing, machine learning and natural language analysis with insights and theories from the social, behavioral and health sciences.

In this episode, Munmun tells us what led to her research and why she wanted to focus on people's wellbeing. She emphasizes how web science can help progress the ways that we currently approach mental health, but also talks about the challenges in her research. And she gets into how people signal or share about their mental health on the Web. To hear all this and more, listen to this episode.

Click here for this episode’s transcript, and click here for this episode's show notes.