- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock

- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock /news-archive/tag/jerry-l-maulden-entergy-endowed-chair/ ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Thu, 22 Aug 2019 14:38:35 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 ��Vlog��ý Little Rock to research smart health in Arkansas, West Virginia with NSF grant /news-archive/2019/08/22/nitin-agarwal-smart-health-nsf/ Thu, 22 Aug 2019 14:38:35 +0000 /news/?p=74918 ...]]> The University of Arkansas at Little Rock is one of five institutions sharing a $4 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a multi-scale integrative approach to digital health. This collaborative, multi-institution grant will be used to promote smart health in Arkansas and West Virginia. Dr. Nitin Agarwal, ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair and professor of information science, will receive $600,000 for the study, entitled “Multi-scale Integrative Approach to Digital Health: Collaborative Research and Education in Smart Health in West Virginia and Arkansas,” which runs from August 2019 to July 2023. The other university partners include the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, West Virginia University, and West Virginia State University. “Healthcare costs are on the rise nationally and significantly more so in Arkansas and West Virginia. This is due to high poverty rates in these states and a significantly large population that is affected by cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, and a general lack of physical activity,” Agarwal said. “To address these issues, we will conduct a collaborative, interdisciplinary, and a multi-scale integrative approach to trigger smart health initiatives with the goal to lower healthcare costs using artificial intelligence and big data analysis approaches. In addition to developing a big data and smart health research infrastructure, we will create education and outreach components to enhance the workforce in both states.” To accomplish these goals, Agarwal will develop novel social media mining algorithms to study health behaviors in Arkansas and West Virginia, including health attitudes, intentions, health conditions, lifestyle choices, overall sentiment, and mood. “Tapping into such an invaluable data trove is often challenging but rewarding,” Agarwal said. “We will study the effectiveness of health communities around predominant health issues in Arkansas and West Virginia and study the validity of social media data for examining patient-reported outcomes, assessing trust, influence, and misinformation in social media pertaining to health discourse.” Agarwal heads the at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, which aims to be at the forefront of the ever-evolving field of social computing. COSMOS is leading several collaborative projects with total funding of more than $10 million from various U.S. federal funding agencies to address some of the most challenging problems of knowledge extraction from big social data and develop methodologies to diagnose novel pathologies of online social media. ]]> Rolf Wigand honored with best paper award /news-archive/2017/01/31/ua-little-rock-researcher-honored-with-best-paper-award/ Tue, 31 Jan 2017 14:57:53 +0000 /news/?p=66180 ...]]> Wigand, ��Vlog��ý Little Rock distinguished professor emeritus in both the departments of Information Science and Business Information Systems, was among three current and former Syracuse University professors . The honored Wigand, a former Syracuse professor, and current Syracuse professors Kevin Crowston and Steven Sawyer with a best paper award during the organization’s 2016 annual meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark. In the paper — — the three researchers suggested that, contrary to popular thought, internet transactions would not easily replace the elaborate role of real estate agents. Real estate transactions are more than bringing together buyers and sellers, the authors contended: Agents actually act as “ … quasi firms helping buyers and sellers navigate complex market transactions.” Those roles include working with contracts, assisting with mortgage lenders, collaborating with home inspectors, and partnering with professionals in other industries. “ … We find that ties to other professionals are more important than ties to buyers and sellers as predictors of the market intermediary’s income, counter to the general wisdom about real estate in particular and market intermediaries more generally,” the paper’s authors wrote. Researchers used a national survey of 525 real estate agents and data from the U.S. residential real estate industry. The project was conducted in cooperation with the , and the research was funded by the . Wigand, who held the role of Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy Endowed Chair at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock, is a past director of the Center for Digital Commerce and the Graduate Program in Information Management at Syracuse University.]]> ��Vlog��ýLR professor monitors anti-NATO narratives for Operation Brilliant Jump /news-archive/2016/06/14/ualr-professor-monitors-anti-nato-narratives-operation-brilliant-jump/ Tue, 14 Jun 2016 14:44:07 +0000 /news/?p=64571 ...]]> A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor and his team of student researchers are investigating how groups are using social media to respond to NATO exercises. Dr. Nitin Agarwal, the ��Vlog��ýLR Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair and a professor of information science, monitored social media responses to, a 2,500-person NATO exercise that focused on the logistics of moving troops and heavy equipment from Spain to Poland within four days. “During the exercise, our role was to examine the social media information environment and identify what type of narratives are being disseminated,” Agarwal said. “More specifically, how are anti-NATO groups reacting to the exercise and the media coverage that NATO public affairs is putting out?” Brilliant Jump, which ran May 17-27, was the third in a series of four NATO exercises taking place in Poland. The aim of the exercise was to train the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force to deploy quickly to an assigned area of operations following the activation of the NATO Response Force. Agarwal’s student research team members include Shiblee Nooman and Abu Fahad Siddiqui, who are earning master’s degrees in information quality, as well as Samer Al-khateeb and Muhammad Nihal Hussain, who are earning doctorates in information science. A fifth team member, Mainuddin Shaik, recently graduated with a master’s degree in information quality and will be working at HP in El Paso, Texas. Agarwal’s team worked in collaboration with other university teams, including Carnegie Mellon and Arizona State, to monitor the social media responses of information disseminated by the NATO public affairs office and by news organizations. The ��Vlog��ýLR team analyzed blogs via, a blog analysis tool Agarwal created. Specifically, Agarwal and his team searched for cyber propaganda campaigns conducted by anti-NATO groups. Cyber propaganda campaigns are deceptive online movements that manifest in physical behaviors and events. These groups use social media to recruit followers, spread propaganda, and encourage action. During Brilliant Jump, anti-NATO bloggers used NATO-disseminated images, videos, and information to spread a narrative that NATO was using the training exercise to prepare for war against Russia. “The idea is to influence the thinking of people into misleading them into thinking that there is an act of aggression against Russia,” Agarwal said. “Misinformation is rampant. It’s everywhere on social media. As information scientists, we should be able to provide ways to measure how truthful or how correct this information is and be able to guide the reader and make them aware of these challenges.” To help combat the growing threat of cyber campaigns, Agarwal and his graduate students are using social network analysis, cyber forensics, and deep web searches to study cyber campaigns to develop models for detecting and predicting the online behaviors of deviant groups. “I have found a lot of conventional propaganda techniques being used in modern spaces like Twitter and Instagram,” Hussain said. “This is a type of social engineering being used to coerce people into believing certain things. I am trying to understand and develop models to identify strategies of propaganda in social media and to help people develop counternarratives and countermeasures to defeat a certain narrative or to eliminate propaganda narratives.” Their research will determine the universal characteristics of cyber campaigns, develop models to identify propaganda strategies used in social media, and help develop countermeasures that can be used to defeat propaganda narratives, Hussain said. “The next phase of battle will be in cyberspace,” Al-khateeb said. “I think the next type of war will be more of a cyber war than a physical war, where you can influence people’s thinking in an easier way using social media.” In addition to Brilliant Jump, Agarwal and his team are also monitoring the social media output regarding. Taking place from June 7-17, this operation is a Polish national exercise that seeks to train, exercise, and integrate Polish national command and force structures into an allied, joint, multinational environment. The work is funded in part by a $186,692 grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research, titled “Analyzing Integrated Social Media-Facilitated Propaganda Campaigns Using Social Network Analysis and Cyber Forensics,” and a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Army Research Office, titled “Towards Predictive Modeling Deviant Cyber Flash Mobs: A Socio-Informatics Driven Hypergraph Framework.” The grant builds on Agarwal’s already significant body of social media research and behavioral modeling. It is part of a larger research program in his Center Of Social Media and Online behavioral Studies (COSMOS) lab. More details on these projects can be found on Agarwal’s project website. In the upper right photo, Dr. Nitin Agarwal’s student research team has been studying the social media output regarding NATO Operation Brilliant Jump. Shown, from left to right, are Samer Al-khateeb, Muhammad Nihal Hussain, Mainuddin Shaik, Mohammad Nooman Shiblee, Nitin Agarwal, and Abu Fahad Siddiqui. Photo by Lonnie Timmons III/��Vlog��ýLR Communications. ]]> ��Vlog��ýLR professor Nitin Agarwal earns grant to support social media research /news-archive/2016/06/09/ualr-professor-earns-grant-to-support-social-media-research/ Thu, 09 Jun 2016 18:07:02 +0000 /news/?p=64560 ...]]> Dr. Nitin Agarwal, the ��Vlog��ýLR Jerry L. Maulden-Entergy endowed chair and a professor of information science, recently received a $186,692 grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research to fund his exploration of cyber campaigns. It’s his fourth major grant in the past academic year. This new grant enables Agarwal to continue his investigation into the practices, tactics, and motivations of organizers of web-based mass movements and their participants. His project focuses on deviant, often deceptive online movements, or cyber campaigns, that manifest in physical behaviors and events. The goal for many of the groups behind these campaigns is to “provoke hysteria, influence mass opinions, stoke civil unrest, effect civil conflict, or even coordinate cyberattacks,” Agarwal said. The effects of these cyber campaigns have been seen all over the world, with major transnational crime organizations utilizing social media to recruit, spread propaganda, and encourage action. Their tactics are complex and diverse, ranging from publishing fake pictures to hiring armies of “trolls” that spread propaganda on blogs and social media. To help combat this growing issue, Agarwal and a graduate student assistant will use cyber forensics and deep web searching to study cyber campaigns. With this data, they will develop models for detecting and predicting the online behavior of deviant groups. The researchers will determine the universal characteristics of cyber campaigns, including how they project a group identity and motivate followers. This new project, titled “Analyzing Integrated Social Media-Facilitated Propaganda Campaigns Using Social Network Analysis and Cyber Forensics,” builds on Agarwal’s already significant body of social media research and behavioral modeling. It is part of a larger research program in his COSMOS (Center Of Social Media and Online behavioral Studies) lab. The research program is funded by the , , , and . More details on these projects can be found on Agarwal’s project website. This project is sponsored by the Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research. Disclaimer: Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Office of Naval Research.]]>