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Volunteer Science

Volunteer Science offers people around the world to become involved in scientific projects on everything from... more

News & Announcements

Volunteers Still Needed

We are still recruiting volunteers for studies on human behavior. We are interested in people from anywhere in the world. Link: https://volunteerscience.com/

Report on Communication in Aftermath of Boston Marathon Bombing

This recently released report is based on survey data from communication on the day of the Boston Marathon Bombing.

POSTDOC 2016

Two postdoctoral positions in computational social science are available with dual appointments at Northeastern and Harvard Universities, to work in the lab of David Lazer.  Candidates will be expected to work on a combination of their own research and collaborative proj

Upcoming Events

October 20, 2017 - 2:00pm
Visiting Speaker - Marc Smith
Charting Collections of Connections in Social Media: Creating Maps and Measures with NodeXL
Network Science Institute - 11th Floor , 177 Huntington Ave. Boston MA 02115

The Lazerlab on twitter

Lab People

Janette M. Briceno
Project Manager
Thalita Coleman
Research Assistant
Stefano Balietti
Post Doctoral Research Fellow
Lisa Friedland
Post Doctoral Research Fellow
Will Hobbs
Post Doctoral Research Fellow
Kenny Joseph
Post Doctoral Research Fellow
Jason Radford
Post Doctoral Research Fellow
Briony Swire Thompson
Post Doctoral Research Fellow
Stefan McCabe
PhD Student
Ronald Robertson
PhD Student
more...

Recent Publications

Journal Article
Enhancing Transparency and Control When Drawing Data-Driven Inferences About Individuals
Publication date: 09/2017
Authors: Daizhuo Chen, Samuel Fraiberger, Robert Moakler, Foster Provost

Recent studies show the remarkable power of fine-grained information disclosed by users on social network sites to infer users’ personal...

Journal Article
Adding noise to the institution: an experimental welfare investigation of the contribution-based grouping mechanism
Publication date: 09/2017
Authors: Heinrich H. Nax, Stefano Balietti, Ryan O. Murphy, Dirk Helbing

Real-world institutions dealing with social dilemma situations are based on mechanisms that are rarely implemented without flaw. Usually real-...

Peer Reviewed Computer Science Conference
ConStance: Modeling Annotation Contexts to Improve Stance Classification
Publication date: 09/2017
Authors: Kenny Joseph, Lisa Friedland, Will Hobbs, David Lazer, Oren Tsur

Manual annotations are a prerequisite for many applications of machine learning. However, weaknesses in the annotation process itself are easy to...

Working Paper
Exploring the Ideological Nature of Journalists' Social Networks on Twitter and Associations with News Story Content
Publication date: 08/2017
Authors: John Wihbey, Kenny Joseph, Thalita Coleman, David Lazer

The present work proposes the use of social media as a tool for better understanding the relationship between a journalists' social network and...

OP ED
Google and Facebook aren't fighting fake news with the right weapons
Publication date: 05/2017
Authors: Matthew A. Baum, David Lazer

We know a lot about fake news. It's an old problem. Academics have been studying it - and how to combat it - for decades. In 1925, Harper's...

Peer Reviewed Computer Science Conference
"Voters of the Year": 19 Voters Who Were Unintentional Election Poll Sensors on Twitter
Publication date: 05/2017
Authors: Will Hobbs, Lisa Friedland, Oren Tsur, Stefan Wojcik, David Lazer

Over the past 12 years, nearly 20 U.S. States have adopted voter photo identification laws, which require voters to show a picture ID to vote....

Peer Reviewed Computer Science Conference
On the Interpretability of Thresholded Social Networks
Publication date: 05/2017
Authors: Oren Tsur, David Lazer

Understanding the factors of network formation is a fundamental aspect in the study of social dynamics. Online activity provides us with abundance...

OP ED
"Mistaken Analysis"
Publication date: 04/2017
Authors: David Lazer
...
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