Management Sciences Seminar | Kathleen M. Carley: "Wisdom & Ignorance: Managing and Manipulating Groups through Heedful Interaction"

Monday, May 14, 2018 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm EDT (GMT -04:00)

It is generally well accepted that your position in the social network affects your ability to get information.  But how do the network positions of those with whom you interact, influence you?  This issue is explored using high dimensional network data. Drawing on theories of social influence and the generalized other, social network analytic and text analytic methods, and data science techniques for big data a series of complex socio-technical situation are assessed. It is found that: (1) network coordination among alters can effect better outcomes for ego, and (2) network manipulation by alters can create communities of ignorance.  In this talk, the precepts of heedful interaction and the way individuals and groups can shape and are in turn shaped by groups in physical and social media environments are described.  Illustrative examples from a number of studies are used to demonstrate how management and manipulation requires impacting the social and the knowledge network simultaneously:  Examples include Community Building around Autistic Children, Community Alerts for Tsunami Warning in Indonesia, Recruitment for ISIS in Syria, and Group Formation in Euromaidan in Ukraine.

Biographical Sketch

Dr. Carley is a Professor of Computer Science in the Institute for Software Research, IEEE Fellow, and Director of the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at Carnegie Mellon University. She joined Carnegie Mellon in 1984 as Assistant Professor Sociology and Information Systems. In 1990 she became Associate Professor of Sociology and Organizations, in 1998 Professor of Sociology, Organizations, and Information Technology, and in 2002, attained her current role as Professor of Computation, Organization, and Society. She is also the CEO of Carley Technologies Inc. aka Netanomics. Dr. Carley’s research combines cognitive science, sociology, and computer science to address complex social and organizational issues. Her most notable research contribution was the establishment of Dynamic Network Analysis (DNA) – and the associated theory and methodology for examining large highdimensional time variant networks. Her research on DNA has resulted in tools for analyzing large‐scale dynamic networks and various multi‐agent simulation systems. Her group has developed tools for extracting sentiment, social and semantic networks from social media and other textual data (AutoMap), simulating epidemiological models (BioWar), simulating covert networks (DyNet), and simulating changes in beliefs and practice given information campaigns (Construct). Her ORA system is one of the premier network analysis and visualization technologies supporting geo‐temporal analysis of social network and meta‐network data. It includes special features for handling small and big data, social media data, and network dynamics. It is used worldwide and at several of the combatant commands. Illustrative projects include assessment of fake news and social cyber‐security, IRS outreach, impact of NextGen on airline rererouting, counter‐terrorism modeling, counter‐narcotics modeling, assessment of design of public‐health departments, mapping the global cyber‐attack network, and social media based assessment of crises such as Benghazi, Darfur, and the Arab Spring.

*Light refreshments will be served at 12pm