/news-archive/tag/computer-and-information-science/ 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock Fri, 25 Feb 2022 14:58:40 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 /news-archive/2022/02/25/cosmos-covid-misinformation/ Fri, 25 Feb 2022 14:58:40 +0000 /news/?p=80951 ... COSMOS Researchers Win Best Paper Award for Research into Dynamics of COVID-19 Misinformation Themes]]> The researchers received the award from the Seventh International Conference on held in Nice, France. The researchers used computational techniques to help reveal the dynamics of COVID-19 misinformation themes that assist in forecasting and proactive policy making. The paper鈥檚 authors include Thomas Marcoux, a doctoral student from Orl茅ans, France, Dr. Esther Mead, who graduated from 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock in 2020 with a Ph.D. in computer and information science and is currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at COSMOS, and Dr. Nitin Agarwal, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair, distinguished professor of information science, and the founding director of COSMOS. 鈥淭he paper proposes a methodology to visualize the evolution of misinformation narratives over time,鈥� Marcoux said. 鈥淲hile it relies on public data and is not intrusive, my hope is that we can progressively reduce the need for such tools. I hope the study can shed some light on the misinformation phenomenon, and help readers get a better grasp of the complexity of online narratives.鈥� The research is intended to help sociologists, journalists, and politicians understand the movements of online trends involving misinformation to help report information, make decisions, and set policies. 鈥淚t is an honor to have been able to work alongside such great researchers on this very important work that illustrates the fact that misinformation stories can be identified on social media and tracked and visualized over time,鈥� Mead said. 鈥淭his capability can be immediately used by social media administrators, governmental organizations, other researchers, and any other collaborative effort towards stemming the misinformation problem.鈥� The research was supported by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, Office of Naval Research, U.S. Army Research Laboratory, National Science Foundation, Australian DSTO, Entergy, and Arkansas Research Alliance. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations. The researchers gratefully acknowledge the support.]]> /news-archive/2021/09/01/researchers-earn-best-paper-award/ Wed, 01 Sep 2021 13:56:06 +0000 /news/?p=78299 ... 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock researchers earn Best Paper Award for research using moviebarcode as video analysis method]]> A group of researchers from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Collaboratorium for Social Media and Online Behavioral Studies (COSMOS) have been recognized for their research using moviebarcode, a technique used to summarize videos by compressing an entire video into a single image, to systematically categorize and analyze videos on YouTube. COSMOS researchers earned the 鈥�鈥� for their submission, 鈥�,鈥� at the 听held in Porto, Portugal.听 The paper was written by , Rick Rejeleene, and, doctoral students in computer and information science at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, , a 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock graduate, Dr. , post-doctoral researcher at COSMOS, and Dr. , Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair and distinguished professor of information science and director of COSMOS.听 鈥淢oviebarcodes are typically used to visualize a summary of videos,鈥� said Erol, the lead author. 鈥淗owever, we used the color theory computationally so that we can categorize videos using this technology. This technique compresses a video into an image, then it summarizes the video. The computation time is very small compared to other deep learning-based algorithms.鈥� Having a tool that allows a quicker method to analyze videos without watching them is important for researchers who study online videos. YouTube, for example, is a popular source of videos for researchers. Approximately one billion hours of video are added to YouTube daily. 鈥淐osmographers have a knack of thinking out of the box and producing groundbreaking innovations,鈥� Dr. Agarwal said. 鈥淢oviebarcode-based video data analysis is one such idea with numerous applications that COSMOS is developing including faster and efficient search and retrieval, computationally extracting noteworthy narrative elements in videos, identifying coordinated influence campaigns, among others.鈥� The research idea stemmed from a project Young worked on during the spring 2019 Social Computing course offered by Dr. Agarwal. 鈥淲hat I find interesting about moviebarcodes is that hours of video content can be quickly digested by a user in a single glance,鈥� Young stated. 鈥淎fter researching moviebarcodes further, I began considering possible applications to my work with COSMOS proposing the development of a moviebarcodes tool that can effectively visualize video data and provide impactful insights.鈥� Each barcode consists of generated colors for every frame of the movie making it unique. All frames combined into one code showed color transition within videos and allowed for a comparison with other videos as well as a highly accurate grouping of videos without having to watch them.听 The team was also able to reduce time and computing energy required to categorize videos by creating video collections and then categorizing videos using a clustering method. 鈥淭his is a big advantage on video processing. By just looking at moviebarcodes, one can easily find what kind of video it is,鈥� Erol said. 鈥�Nowadays, deep learning-based algorithms and tools are used for similar purposes. However, video processing requires a huge amount of GPU computation power and resources. Not all researchers may have access to these resources. With our research, we try to minimize computing requirements for large scale video processing and make this tool available for all users.鈥� The COSMOS team is already exploring how moviebarcode can be used for different research applications. 鈥淲e are using the moviebarcode technique for different research areas including information retrieval, optimization of recommendation engines, video categorization, and video characterization,鈥� Erol said. 鈥淎s part of my Ph.D. research, I am developing another tool, specifically for YouTube video characterization, YouTube video search, and scalable YouTube video categorization to make social computing researchers’ lives easier.鈥� This research is funded in part by the U.S. Air Force Research Lab, U.S. Office of Naval Research, U.S. Army Research Office, U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, U.S. National Science Foundation, Arkansas Research Alliance, and the Jerry L. Maulden/Entergy Endowment at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding organizations. The researchers gratefully acknowledge the support.]]> /news-archive/2021/03/11/galeano-selected-for-workshop/ Thu, 11 Mar 2021 21:47:19 +0000 /news/?p=78443 ... Galeano selected for Workshop for Women in Computer Science Industry]]> A University of Arkansas at Little Rock doctoral student has been selected for a prestigious workshop designed to prepare graduate students for careers in the computer science industry. Katrin Galeano, a third-year doctoral student in the integrated computer and information science Ph.D. program, will attend the Grad Cohort for Women conference that will be held virtually April 23-24. 鈥淚鈥檓 really looking forward to the conference,鈥� Galeano said. 鈥淚 receive a lot of mentoring and support from COSMOS and Dr. (Nitin) Agarwal, but I think it will be great to communicate and have an exchange with women researchers. I cannot be the only person balancing between being a doctoral student, being a mom, and, in our case, being a military wife all during the time of COVID.鈥� At the Grad Cohort for Women Conference, participants interact with about 20 senior female computing-related researchers and professionals, who will share pertinent information on graduate school survival skills, as well as more personal information and insights about their experiences. The workshop aims to increase the ranks of senior women in computing-related studies and research by building and mentoring nationwide communities of women through their graduate studies. The two-day event is hosted by the Computing Research Association (CRA), an organization dedicated to bringing industry, government, and academia together to support research and advanced education in computing.听 鈥淚 am ecstatic because this conference gives me a lot of motivation,鈥� Galeano said. 鈥淢y goal this semester is to complete the Ph.D. candidacy exam and to prepare for my dissertation proposal.鈥� Galeano is a researcher with the Collaboratorium for Social Media and Behavioral Studies () at 糖心Vlog传媒 Little Rock, a research group led by, Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Science. 鈥淐RA-WP is a highly competitive program that provides a platform to female graduate students to share their research with internationally renowned scientists,鈥� Agarwal said. 鈥淲e are extremely proud of Katrin Galeano for being selected in CRA-WP that encourages participation from women and other underrepresented groups in STEM disciplines – a cause that COSMOS champions and celebrates.鈥澨� Galeano plans to graduate in 2022. For her dissertation, she will research the effectiveness of deplatforming, also known as no-platforming, which is a form of or by an individual, group, or organization with the goal of shutting down controversial speakers or speech, or denying them access to a venue in which to express their opinion. 鈥淵ouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms have been removing various information actors,鈥� Galeano said. 鈥淭he question is what do those information actors do and where do they go? Do they evolve, and what happens to their followers? That鈥檚 something I would like to explore. With the former president of the United States being removed from many social media platforms, it鈥檚 brought the issue to greater attention.鈥�]]>