Research

My research focuses on using large datasets, primarily social media data, to understand conflict, migration, and polarization. I am particularly interested in the ways in which online data can be used to support vulnerable, diverse, and hard to reach populations, as well as how such information can be combined with survey data and other traditional data sources. Methodologically, I am interested in probabilistic machine learning and natural language processing.

Working Papers:

Displacement and Return in the Internet Era: Social Media for Monitoring Migration Decisions in Northern Syria with Fotini Christia and Kiran Garimella. Revise and resubmit at World Development. Accepted with revisions at World Development. Video for MGHPCC SC22 virtual booth: https://sc22.mghpcc.org/project/refugee-migration-and-return-on-social-media/

Social Media Narratives across Platforms in Conflict: Evidence from Syria with Elizabeth Parker-Magyar, Ahmet Akbiyik, Kiran Garimella, and Fotini Christia. Preprint: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4075120

Simplistic Collection and Labeling Practices Limit the Utility of Benchmark Datasets for Twitter Bot Detection with John Chris Hays, Zachary Schutzman, Philipp Zimmer, Manish Raghavan. Accepted at TheWebConf. Preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.07015

Predicting individual mortality with traditional and machine learning methods with Luca Badolato, Ari Decter-Frain, Nicholas J. Irons, Maria Miranda, Elnura Zhalieva, Monica Alexander, Ugofilippo Basellini, and Emilio Zagheni.

Scholarly migration and collaboration worldwide: A word embedding representation with Aliakbar Akbaritabar.