In this episode (22 minutes long), we talk with Matt Weber, a faculty member in the Department of Communication at the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. With more than a decade of experience researching information ecosystems, organizations and communities, Matt focuses on the use of large scale web data to study processes of change. In addition, Matt has been an active member of the web science community. He’s the program co-chair for the ACM 2021 Web Science Conference, and delivered a keynote at this year’s conference. 

In this episode, Matt explains the process of web archiving, along with some of the questions it enables us to explore. He touches on how his own research, some of which centers on news media production, fits into all this. And he discusses some of the challenges and issues that surround web archiving, as well as pathways to solutions. To hear these insights and more, listen to this episode.

Click here for this episode’s transcript, and here for this episode’s show notes.

For this episode, (23 min) we talk with Emilio Ferrara, an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He’s also a Research Team Leader for AI at USC’s Information Sciences Institute and the Director of the Annenberg Networks Network (ANN). Earlier this year, Emilio became the Chair of the Web Science Trust Network of Laboratories (WSTNet).

In this episode, Emilio discusses his vision for the next generation of Web Science, especially in light of his newly appointed chair position. And he also talks about some of his research into how bots can manipulate conversations around vaccines and public health. Much before COVID-19, he was involved in a DARPA challenge surrounding bots engaged in vaccination debate. Then, in January 2020, right as the pandemic was coming on the horizon, Emilio’s lab jumped on collecting data about bots spreading COVID-19 conspiracies. For insights into this and more, listen to this episode.

Click here for this episode’s transcript, and here for this episode’s show notes.

Our guest for this episode (23 min.) is Dr. Aleks Krotoski, an award-winning international broadcaster, author and academic. She studies and writes about technology and interactivity. Her book, “Untangling the Web: What the Internet is Doing to You,” based on her hit columns in the Guardian and Observer, was published in 2012. Since then, she’s continued to break ground in academia and journalism, and she’s currently a Visiting Fellow in the Media and Communications Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute.

During this episode, Aleks talks about how our online lives have become entangled with our offline ones. Her research has found that we bring our existing ideas about society to the virtual worlds we build. But unlike in the past, there’s less space to play around with our identities online. And, there’s more consequences — for many people, the things they did 10 or 15 years ago still pop up when you search their name. What does that mean for our own growth, and how is the Web evolving, too? To hear all this and more, listen to this episode.

During this episode, (26 min. long), we talk with Munmun De Choudhury, a professor of interactive computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she leads the Social Dynamics and Wellbeing Lab.  Her research centers on using social media to better understand and improve mental health. She draws on an interdisciplinary approach, combining social computing, machine learning and natural language analysis with insights and theories from the social, behavioral and health sciences.

In this episode, Munmun tells us what led to her research and why she wanted to focus on people’s wellbeing. She emphasizes how web science can help progress the ways that we currently approach mental health, but also talks about the challenges in her research. And she gets into how people signal or share about their mental health on the Web. To hear all this and more, listen to this episode.

Click here for this episode’s transcript, and click here for this episode’s show notes.

Our guest for this episode, (21 min. long) is Robert Ackland, a professor from the School of Sociology at the Australian National University in Canberra. Rob studies networks on the Web, and he established the Virtual Observatory for the Study of Online Networks — VOSON for short — to provide tools for research on this topic. 

During this episode, Rob talks about his early work with hyperlinks, as well as how he evolved his research and VOSON tools as we entered the social media era. He explains how he got involved in web science, as his background is mainly in economics, as well as what he’s interested in now. And he talks about how we could use social bots as a positive force for political deliberation, even as so much of research on bots focuses on their negative effects. To hear all this and more, listen to this episode.

Click here for this episode’s transcript, and click here for this episode’s show notes.