Lazer Lab

News & Announcements

Volunteer Science offers people around the world to become involved in scientific projects on everything from collaboration to how people respond to natural disas

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/

NetSi PhD Student, Matt Simonson selected for National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship

http://www.networkscienceinstitute.org/news/netsi-phd-student-matthew-simonson-selecte

Major Award for Dr. Briony Swire-Thompson

Briony Swire-Thompson has won a Pathway to Independence Award (K99/R00) from the NIH National Cancer Institute. The objective of this five year award is to help researchers transition to an independent position.

Survey: Mothers more hesitant than fathers about coronavirus vaccines for their children

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/05/10/nation/survey-mothers-more-hesitant-than-fathers-about-coronavirus-vaccines-their

Trump's kingmaking plan threatens GOP's Congress hopes in 2022

David Lazer, University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Computer Sciences and Co-Director of NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks, was interviewed by Bloomberg on the upcoming 2022 midterm elections and how the influence of the former President

How Do We Overcome Vaccine Hesitancy?

The Lazerlab on Twitter

A Twitter List by HBablick

Lab People

David Lazer

Director

Northeastern University

Jason Radford	Briony Swire Thompson Senior Research Scientist
Janette M. Briceno Project Manager	Luke Horgan Research Programmer
Jonathan Green Post Doctoral Research Fellow	Hanyu Chwe PhD Student
Adina Gitomer PhD Student	Syed Arefinul Haque PhD Student
Stefan McCabe PhD Student	Hong Qu PhD Student

more...

Featured

COVID-19

The State of The Nation: A 50-State COVID-19 Survey

03/2021

Authors: David Lazer, Mauricio Santillana, Roy H. Perlis, Matthew A. Baum, Katherine Ognyanova, James Druckman, Alexi Quintana Mathé, Matthew Simonson, Adina Gitomer, Jonathan Green, Hanyu Chwe, Jennifer Lin, Ata A. Uslu

This report is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under grants SES2029292 and SES-2029297.

COVID-19

Identifying and Measuring Conditional Policy Preferences: The Case of Opening Schools During A Pandemic

12/2020

Authors: Jonathan Green, Matthew A. Baum, James Druckman, David Lazer, Katherine Ognyanova, Matthew Simonson, Roy H. Perlis, Mauricio Santillana

An individual’s issue preferences are non-separable when they depend on other issue outcomes (Lacy 2001a), presenting measurement challenges for traditional survey research.

Recent Publications

Misinformation

Backfire effects after correcting misinformation are strongly associated with reliability

Publication date: 07/2021
Authors: Briony Swire Thompson, Nicholas Miklaucic, John Wihbey, David Lazer, Joseph DeGutis

The backfire effect is when a correction increases belief in the very misconception it is attempting...

Journal Article

Something to Run For: Articulated Interest and Candidate Emergence

Publication date: 07/2021
Authors: Jonathan Green, Meredith Conroy, Ciera Hammond

Patterns in candidate emergence affect who voters can choose from, and thus the quality of representative democracy. Despite extensive work...

Working Paper

Despair or Defiance? Assessing Turnout Effects of Election Misinformation

Publication date: 07/2021
Authors: Jonathan Green, William Hobbs, Stefan McCabe, David Lazer

Following the 2020 general election, Republican elected officials, including then-President Donald Trump, promoted conspiracy theories claiming...

Journal Article

Meaningful measures of human society in the twenty-first century

Publication date: 06/2021
Authors: David Lazer, Eszter Hargittai, Deen Freelon, Sandra Gonzalez-Bailon, Kevin Munger, Katherine Ognyanova, Jason Radford

Science rarely proceeds beyond what scientists can observe and measure, and sometimes what can be observed proceeds far ahead of scientific...

Journal Article

Tackling misinformation: What researchers could do with social media data

Publication date: 12/2020
Authors: Irene V. Pasquetto, Briony Swire Thompson, Michelle A. Amazeen, Fabricio Benevenuto, Nadia M. Brashier, Robert M. Bond, Lia C. Bozarth, Ceren Budak, Ullrich K. H. Ecker, Lisa K. Fazio, Emilio Ferrara, Andrew J. Flanagin, Alessandro Flammini, Deen Freelon, Nir Grinberg, Ralph Hertwig, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Kenny Joseph, Jason J. Jones, R. Kelly Garrett, Daniel Kreiss, Shannon McGregor, Jasmine McNealy, Drew Margolin, Alice Marwick, Filippo Menczer, Miriam J. Metzger, Seungahn Nah, Stephan Lewandowsky, Philipp Lorenz-Spreen, Pablo Ortellado, Gordon Pennycook, Ethan Porter, David G. Rand, Ronald Robertson, Francesca Tripodi, Soroush Vosoughi, Chris Vargo, Onur Varul, Brian E. Weeks, John Wihbey, Thomas J. Wood, Kai-Cheng Yang

Social media platforms rarely provide data to misinformation researchers. This is problematic as platforms play a major role in the...

Journal Article

Searching for the backfire effect: Measurement and design considerations

Publication date: 09/2020
Authors: Briony Swire Thompson, Joe DeGutis, David Lazer

One of the most concerning notions for science communicators, fact-checkers, and advocates of truth, is the backfire effect; this is when a...

Journal Article

Good Decisions or Bad Outcomes? A Model for Group Deliberation on Value-Laden Topics

Publication date: 06/2020
Authors: Sarah Shugars

Agent-based models present an ideal tool for interrogating the dynamics of communication and exchange. Such models allow individual aspects of...

Journal Article

Theory In, Theory Out: The Uses of Social Theory in Machine Learning for Social Science

Publication date: 05/2020
Authors: Jason Radford, Kenny Joseph

Research at the intersection of machine learning and the social sciences has provided critical new insights into social behavior. At the same time...