Join the Department of Social Sciences for this Great Problems, Great Minds seminar series event featuring guest speaker Bill Rand, an associate professor of marketing at the Poole College of Management at North Carolina State University online, November 10 from
Social media is a powerful force for communication that has allowed groups that never had a voice before to come together and speak out on societal issues. Unfortunately, many adversarial actors are attempting to distort the conversations happening in this medium. Since a well-functioning society relies on its citizens being well-informed, the potential negative consequences are large. In this talk, we will discuss some of these issues and recent efforts to combat adversarial social media.
Bio
Bill Rand is an associate professor of marketing at the Poole College of Management at North Carolina State University. Rand examines the use of computational modeling techniques, such as agent-based modeling, machine learning, network analysis, natural language processing, and geographic information systems, to help understand and analyze complex systems, such as the diffusion of information, organizational learning, and economic markets. He also works to develop methods, create pedagogy, and build frameworks to allow researchers and practitioners to use analytics and data-intensive methods in their own work. He has received funding for his research from the NSF, DARPA, ARL, Google, WPP, and the Marketing Science Institute. His work has been published in JM, JMR, IJRM, Management Science, and JOM. He received his doctorate in computer science from the University of Michigan in 2005, and prior to coming to NC State, was at the University of Maryland for eight years.