LOLspeak study

[cross-posted from PR Connections]

I have been arguing for a while that LOLcats belong in graduate courses and they are worthy of scholarly research.

So, here is a presentation about the linguistic study of LOLspeak (the language cats speak). It is analyzed as language play that has a function in the construction of online identity – as a cat and Internet savvy person.

TECH 621 Fall 2011 – Presentation Structure

Remember that we will meet back in Knoy for the last class session: Your final project presentation.

Please keep your presentation short – no more than 5-7 minutes, and follow this structure:

1. Research Question – explain the purpose of the research
2. Methods – explain how you collected and analyzed data
3. Findings – describe your sample and your most important findings
4. So, what? – explain what your findings mean, why they are important and to whom and their implications

The presentation is not graded – but if you do not present or don’t give it due attention, your APP points will suffer.

The main goal is to inform each other about our projects – it will be interesting to see what people did and what they found.

I will bring some snacks. If you’d like to, you’re welcome to bring something, too – but you don’t have to.

Dark side and Wild Card classes

Remember that this Thursday you’re presenting on a topic related to the dark side of the social internet.

Let’s tentatively plan to present remotely (but don’t get out of town yet).

Please use comments to this post to propose & discuss ideas for the Wild Card class on Dec. 1. It is your class, I am open to all ideas.

Week’s best: Oct 31-Nov 4, 2011

The post I really enjoyed last week was Xin’s visual reading reflection. Check it out!

CFP: International Workshop on User Modeling from Social Media

Thought this may be interesting to both my social media and user interface students. Even if you are not submitting, read the call for participation just to become informed about trends and research ideas.

Call for Participation: 1st International Workshop on User Modeling from Social Media
In conjunction with IUI 2012, Lisbon – Portugal

Massive amounts of data are being generated on social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook. People from all
walks of life share data about social events, express opinions, discuss their interests, publicize businesses,
recommend products, and, explicitly or implicitly, reveal personal information.

This workshop will focus on the use of social media data for creating models of individual users from the content that
they publish. Deeper understanding of user behavior and associated attributes can benefit a wide range of intelligent
applications, such as social recommender systems and expert finders, as well as provide the foundation in support
of novel user interfaces (e.g., actively engaging the crowd in mixed-initiative question-answering systems). These
applications and interfaces may offer significant benefits to users across a wide variety of domains, such as retail,
government, healthcare and education. User modeling from public social media data may also reveal information that users would prefer to keep private. Such concerns are particularly important because individuals do not have complete control over the information they share about themselves. For example, friends of a user may inadvertently divulge private information about that user in their own posts. In this workshop we will also discuss possible mechanisms that
users might employ to monitor what information has been revealed about themselves on social media and obfuscate
any sensitive information that has been accidentally revealed.

In this workshop, we will discuss related topics:

• What aspects of an individual can be modeled from their public social media postings?
• What aspects cannot be modeled?
• What aspects should not be modeled?
• How accurate are the models that can be extracted?
• What are the best techniques for creating models?
• How might the creation of such models be thwarted?
(e.g. to preserve privacy while still allowing participation on a social network)

We hope to bring together researchers and practitioners from diverse areas, such as user modeling, intelligent user
interaction, social media analysis, natural language processing, data mining, machine learning, privacy and
security, to discuss these issues and share results.

TOPICS OF INTERESTS

Topics of interest may include but not limited to:

• Domain-specific user modeling using public social
media, including twitter, facebook, myspace, social
Q&A sites, and Amazon.com reviews for
- Retail
- Government
- Healthcare
- Education
- Sports
- News

• Domain-independent user modeling using public
social media, such as twitter, facebook, myspace, and
foursquare, to derive a wide variety of user traits
including:
- Locations
- Personality
- Demographics
- Age
- Gender

• Enterprise-focused user modeling using social media
data on public social networks and communications
(e.g., emails and blogs) within an enterprise:
- Employees’ social and collaboration patterns in a
workplace
- Work-related personality traits such as innovativeness, versatility, adaptiveness,
leadership quality, and level of expertise.

• Task-specific user modeling for
- Information recommendation
- Crowd-sourcing
- Expert finding
- Social Q&A

We plan to propose a special issue of ACM Transactions on
Interactive Information Systems (TIIS) on this topic after
the workshop.

PAPER SUBMISSION

We invite submissions in two categories:

• Position papers (2 pages)
• Short papers (4 pages)

All submission should be prepared according to the
standard SIGCHI publications format (available in
http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform) and submitted to jumahmud@us.ibm.com

WORKSHOP FORMAT

We will hold a full-day workshop program on the first day
of IUI 2012. The program begins with a madness session
during which participants introduce themselves and their
work in 5 minutes. Participants will be encouraged to make
slides for the madness session, but this will not be required.
Each paper session will conclude with a discussion led by a
pre-chosen workshop participant. These discussions will tie
together common themes of the presentations and hopefully
lead to insightful discussions about further research
directions. The program will end with a panel discussion
where panelists will discuss the current state of the art,
focus areas, and opportunities for future research.

IMPORTANT DATES

• Paper Submissions – January 6, 2012
• Author Notification – January 20, 2012
• Camera-Ready version – January 27, 2012
• Workshop – February 14, 2012

CONTACT & WEBSITE

jumahmud@us.ibm.com

https://sites.google.com/site/umsocial2012/

ORGANIZATION

Jalal Mahmud, IBM Research – Almaden
Jeffrey Nichols, IBM Research – Almaden
Michelle Zhou, IBM Research – Almaden

Week’s best: Oct. 17-28, 2011

I took a  quick look at the past two weeks in class blog posts, and here’s what stood out to me:

• Self-organizing the self – neat video found by Geovon
• Everything is miscellaneous… except towels – loved the application of concepts to everyday life, and the combination of conceptual thinking with a warm, personal tone.(GenXRecon)
• Alex’s reading notes for Everything is Miscellaneous are enthusiastic! So maybe he doesn’t hate (all) reading, after all
• And a neat idea from GenXRecon – demonstrating how, if you make ideas yours by applying them to your own interests, you may come up with interesting new research topics.

What’s been your week’s best? Consider writing such posts now and again – they are a great way of showing what you’ve read (and commented on)!

Pulling teeth

So this title may not be entirely relevant, but I sometimes feel like social media immersion is like pulling teeth. Students who get it end up benefiting, though, and I guess that makes it worth while. Tonight’s class also felt like pulling teeth… I understand we’re all tired, and some of us sick, and sometimes life sucks, but hey, at least I get to complain on my blog. And on Twitter. Once again, my Twitter network comes to the rescue. I asked:

My students need advice about engaging on Twitter w/ ppl they haven't met before. Advice?—
Mihaela (Dr. V) (@mihaela_v) October 27, 2011

Here’s advice for you TECH 621 students. I met ALL of these people, btw, on Twitter.

@mihaela_v Reply directly to those tweets that truly spark their interest and don't rely on RTs and DMs.—
Erica Buteau (@EricaButeau) October 27, 2011

@mihaela_v Remind them that MOST people we engage with are folks we haven't met before. That's the cool part. Like you and me. —
Bonnie Upright, APR (@bonnieupright) October 27, 2011

@mihaela_v @manamica has great tips on her firm's blog, lightspandigital.com—
Renata Haidle (@conntess) October 27, 2011

@mihaela_v retweet their content if you approve and use that to start a convo—
Teddy Huff (@thuff) October 27, 2011

@mihaela_v Reply to questions they pose. —
Brian (@bgsmithphd) October 28, 2011

And, in response to my thank you Tweet:

@mihaela_v My pleasure! I really liked this post of hers: lightspandigital.com/wp-content/upl… cc@manamica—
Renata Haidle (@conntess) October 28, 2011

You ABSOLUTELY need to check out the Twitter workout [pdf] @conntess mentions. Try it for a week. See what happens.

I just need to remind myself that even though it feels like pulling teeth today, I may hear from you 3-4 years later with one of those notes that make it all worthwhile. Until then, please know that if you need a tooth pulled, I am here to help, patiently and lovingly.

Tweet away,

Dr. V