Valerie Jones is founder of the Public Insight Lab, she's also a fellow and grantee at the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center. She sits down with Gus to talk about this new interdisciplinary research lab, which will fuel social media research on campus using state-of-the-art social and digital media analytics software. Faculty affiliated with the lab engage with researchers across campus to enhance existing and future research projects with social and digital media analysis.
Researchers interested in engaging in the Public Insight Lab user group, working with the lab on current projects, or including the lab in project proposals can contact the Public Insight Lab at publicinsightlab@unl.edu.
Valerie Jones is founder of the Public Insight Lab, she's also a fellow and grantee at the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center. She sits down with Gus to talk about this new interdisciplinary research lab, which will fuel social media research on campus using state-of-the-art social and digital media analytics software. Faculty affiliated with the lab engage with researchers across campus to enhance existing and future research projects with social and digital media analysis.
Researchers interested in engaging in the Public Insight Lab user group, working with the lab on current projects, or including the lab in project proposals can contact the Public Insight Lab at publicinsightlab@unl.edu.
Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and has not been thoroughly reviewed for completeness or accuracy.
[00:00:00] Gus Herwitz: This is Tech Refactored. I'm your host, Gus Herwitz, the Menard Director of the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center at the University of Nebraska. Today we're joined by Valerie Jones. Valerie is an associate professor of advertising and public relations at the College of Journalism and Mass Communications here at the University of Nebraska.
She is also a faculty fellow with a governance and technology center and a recipient of a governance and technology center supplemental grant to support her development of the Public Insight Lab. Today we'll be discussing her work generally and the Public Insight Lab in specific. Valerie, thank you for joining.
[00:00:56] Valerie Jones: Thank you for having me.
[00:00:58] Gus Herwitz: So can you, uh, start with just [00:01:00] by, uh, telling us a little bit about your work and, uh, the, the field of advertising and public relations? Yeah,
[00:01:06] Valerie Jones: so I, I kind of came from a professional background. So I came from working at advertising agencies, particularly in media strategy, in a new media.
So it was all about, Helping figure out how these emerging forms of media, um, could be used to help connect with consumers, help brands connect with consumers, which was fun. I was think pretty decent at it. I managed to hold down a job for a while and then, and then I really started focusing on. Pursuing an academic path.
And so I started here eight years ago. Um, and I've kind of transitioned my previous work in emerging media. I'm thinking about and researching how that can connect, um, people to my academic research. So I have kind of two streams because every academic needs two to three streams of research, of research- so I have two.
The first [00:02:00] is focused on using emerging media, particularly, um, AI driven voice assistance for influencing perceptions of loneliness, um, among aging adults. And I have a couple of projects underway in that regard. Short story? Yes. Things like Amazon Echoes can actually significantly. Um, decreased perceptions of loneliness among aging adults.
Important to know with an increasingly large population of aging folks who wanna age alone and not necessarily be in a facility. The second stream, um, is what's most relevant here, which is focus on how, um, social media research can be used in kind of an academic context. And so the Public Insight Lab is all about becoming a hub for social media research on campus, um, and helping, um, faculty and the students think about how to and design.
Social media, research related projects to help answer their research questions.
[00:02:58] Gus Herwitz: So we will definitely delve [00:03:00] into both of those. I, I, I want to start just by asking though, it there, there's a thing people say nowadays, e everyone is their own brand. Um, especially with social media for, uh, students and those interested in the field, I guess I'll just ask, is that true and what does that mean for how we should be thinking about, uh, not just our media consumption, but our public identity and our, our media production?
[00:03:26] Valerie Jones: Yeah, interesting question. So, coming from my field, from an advertising and PR space, you know, there's nothing dirty about saying that everyone's their own brand, but I think in some academic circles that sounds, you know, and to many people, I think that sounds pretty, maybe gosh and sad and like you're trivializing who we are as, as people.
But I, I think that if we're being honest, you know, I use the, the definition that a brand is a shortcut to an idea. And I think particularly in academia, actually, you are your own brand. [00:04:00] Um, because people wanna understand what your research is about, right? And you have to have kind of a short elevator pitch about what your research is about.
I think for students particularly as you know, you go into finding your first jobs and things, if you can help people understand. What idea you're about. It helps them kind of make decisions. For better or worse, we're simple creatures as people, right? We wanna have black and white answers, and it helps people make decisions about, about what you can do and kind of what you might offer their organization.
And so I'd say yes, we kind of are own brands and social media is the most public facing. Expression of that. I mean, I think a lot of people find themselves working with social media and posting on social media differently than they used to years ago because it is so public and it has become such a destination before doing research about students that you're hiring, for example, or people that you're hiring for [00:05:00] new jobs.
So you do have to be thoughtful about that, for better or worse.
[00:05:03] Gus Herwitz: I- if you're a student or a early career professional, should you be on social media?
[00:05:12] Valerie Jones: Yes. With an asterisk. Yes, but don't be an idiot. Right. Which can be applied to I think, many errors of our lives. Yes. But don't be an idiot. Um, you know, be thoughtful about, about who can see what you, what you post.
But it, it can provide, you know, an interesting expression of, of who you are. And also, of course, Kinda helps us connect with each other and with the, with the broader world. We just have to understand that that broader world maybe thinking about hiring us. So don't be an idiot.
[00:05:46] Gus Herwitz: Other than don't be an idiot, do you have any, uh, pieces of advice or, uh, common mistakes people make that talking to students? Just the, the top three things that you tell students. [00:06:00]
[00:06:00] Valerie Jones: I think the first thing is actually don't overlook LinkedIn as as a social media source. So, you know, socially as students and as younger people, that's not something that we necessarily go to.
But it's, it's, even if you feel like you don't have a great work experience or great history, it's still something that comes up when, when you're Googled right, by a potential employer. And it's something that you can control and contain pretty well. Like you can put your best self , um, out there on LinkedIn, for example.
So don't overlook that. Second for all of us, you know, you can make things public or private. So think about it, if you wanna make things public or private, um, and think about who the audiences are that you're really, you know, that you're really posting for. And then the third thing, be, enjoy it too. I mean, we don't have to be, I think as employers, you know, I've hired people, you've probably hired people, you know, you're not looking for like.[00:07:00]
You don't necessarily need angels, but you need people who understand the rules of the road and you wanna see what people are, are actually like and what they're actually into. You do wanna see a whole person and so, you know, don't be afraid to enjoy it, but do. Keep the audiences in mind.
[00:07:17] Gus Herwitz: That's such a great point.
One thing that I've certainly noticed when I've been in positions of hiring or just, uh, looking up potential colleagues for, uh, research projects or things like that, or looking at students or what, whatever, a lot of. Folks do have social media residences that are rather aine. They are very sanitized. And when you see that, you think is this person on social media as a way of just being on social media and marketing themselves.
in which case I'm kind skeptical with it. Mm-hmm. . So that, I guess in, in marketing generally we talk a a whole lot about authenticity and things like that. And if you aren't coming [00:08:00] across as an authentic whole person that can put you into an uncanny valley or can make you feel inauthentic. Yeah,
[00:08:07] Valerie Jones: absolutely true.
And I think as potential employers, as people looking at people's social media feeds too, you can understand that. Different audience or different platforms are for different things, right? So I would expect to see different content on Twitter that may be more like self-promoting. I know it is for me and it hurts me to even say that, but even though I'm in the, in a biz, Twitter is more public facing and that may be more self-promoting, but an Instagram won't, wouldn't expect that to be more personal and, and those things are okay.
So yeah, don't be afraid to be yourself as long as those things won't get you.
[00:08:42] Gus Herwitz: So let's, uh, turn to your research and, uh, start with, uh, the project that you had mentioned, looking at voice activated technologies and other voice assistant technologies, um, and the like and their role in addressing loneliness.
Mm-hmm. , can you, uh, start just by telling us how you [00:09:00] got into this really fascinating question? Yeah.
[00:09:04] Valerie Jones: So it started with just my background and, and interest in kind of emerging media. And I do see voice assistance like the Amazon Echoes and Google Nest of the world as, as forms of media. Um, and I think it's much more than that.
But as marketers, we talk about building relationships with the audience and these sorts of devices and this sort of technology. You, you can actually. Start doing that. Right. So in theory, and I don't think the tech is quite there yet, but in theory you can pick up a conversation where you left off with the AI or with the brands that you were just interacting with.
And that's something that as marketers, we've been. Talking about for a long time. So I started exploring just kind of, um, start exploring it from a marketing and advertising perspective. So the first study was with advertisers about how this is useful for their brands and what kinds of brands it might be useful for, and what kinds of outcomes and [00:10:00] goals they might be looking for from developing.
Skills or activities or product integrations with, with these voice assistants. And then it, the next one was about really kind of affordances of voice assistants. So just looking from a phenomenal phenomenological perspective- oh my gosh...
[00:10:20] Gus Herwitz: What would one of the hardest words to say? You did a great job.
[00:10:24] Valerie JonesI'm sweating.
[00:10:25] Gus Herwitz: Um, Hagel would be proud.
[00:10:27] Valerie Jones: right? From that perspective. Just, you know, what kind of why and how do, do people use this and what do they get from it? And what's the kind of meaning of having one in your home and interacting with it on a regular basis? And, you know, key points of differentiation with this are, are its accessibility, right?
We don't have to learn a special program, special interface, and the, and the personalization and customization. And that made me think about audiences that might be particularly useful for. You know, interactive communication technologies have been used for [00:11:00] a, a long time to, with older people and to help influence perceptions of loneliness.
But not having to learn any special interface or program, not not having to deal with vision issues potentially, which, which are or can be a problem in an aging population. Um, it made this kind of particularly promising for that, for that group. And, The, the pandemic made it even more important, I think, about how we can use media effectively to, to communicate with and, and enrich the lives of those who are living alone.
Whether it's because they're older or because they're isolated and marginalized in some other way.
[00:11:42] Gus Herwitz: So there, there's one thing there that they just want to, uh, highlight and we might come back to. I'm, I'm just fascinated by this idea of what we think today. Voice assistance technologies, things like the Amazon ex, uh, Echo, or Alexa.
Alexa. Wow. I, I know these Alexa. [00:12:00] Um, and today, these are just the devices that we can interact with using voice commands, but I, I never thought of them as an actual media platform, so I could imagine as soon as you said, Instead of watching your, uh, favorite news, anchors giving you the news on, uh, the television.
You ask your voice assistant, What, what happened in the news today? And it, you hear your favorite television anchor? Come on and start talking to you, and you can. Interactively. Oh, that's interesting. What did the police do about that? Or, uh, can you tell me more? Or, I, I don't care about the weather this week.
What about next week? And they actually have a conversation with you that's fascinating and weird and scary.
[00:12:41] Valerie Jones: It is all of those things and, and I think just increasingly it'll be, you know, kind of the communications hub of the home. And I think too about how they're already curating information. I mean, I don't know.
I have an echo show, so there's the screen. And I don't know or understand why I see what I [00:13:00] do on the screen or how much it varies by person and, and their tastes and their prior behaviors and things like that. But, but that, That is, you know, potentially influencing conversation and knowledge and cooking habits in that home.
I, I think it, it is weird and maybe bad and maybe good. What's happening?
[00:13:22] Gus Herwitz: Well, uh, uh, going back to, uh, the focus on. Elder care, engaging populations. H how are these technologies being used today and what, what are their potentials, uh, for the future?
[00:13:35] Valerie Jones: Yeah, so it's, it was interesting. Um, I got a, I got a call from a woman in my office who is the daughter of one of the participants in this study.
Um, and she, so we. Gave voices assistance to people in a facility here. They were all 75 plus, 75 to 92. Asked them to interact with it five times a day, [00:14:00] kind of fill out a survey in the beginning and the end, um, the last 30 days they could interact with it or not. We found that a, they continued interacting with it even when they didn't have to, like 10 times a day.
And B, those that interacted with it more as kind of a person in an anthropomorphic way, greeted it, said, Good morning, good night. I'm leaving. Now you're in charge of the cats. That's real. That their perceptions of loneliness were, were influenced more. So we've, we've found that this can be effective.
Going back to the story of this woman calling me, her mom had had it, she passed away. Um, she's calling to ask if I needed it back. I didn't. And she said that, that her, it was such a companion for her mom, and, and she's spoke to it every day and looked forward to it, and she said, I tried to get the facility to, to offer this to all the residents because my mom got so much out of it.
I don't, you know, I'm not, It's good for some people and maybe not useful for others, but I can see that, and I've talked with care facilities who've been interested in, is this [00:15:00] something that we should offer to our residents who are interested, you know, to our residents for whom you know, who they're into technology and, and they're interested in it, in a device like this.
And so just having, you know, there's research that indicates that just having. Conversations every day makes a difference in terms of cognitive decline, mild cognitive impairment, and dementia. You know, this is a something with which you can have a conversation and not everybody has somebody that they can call or feels like they can call their needs.
Valerie, all the time to chat. There is some work being done in Australia. Some researchers developed a broach. That all, it's not, you know, made by any company or brand. It's not monitoring what words you say, but just monitors how many words a day you do say. And then notifications are sent to caregivers if you haven't said anything that day so that you can give your loved one a call and, and have a chat, because that does make a difference in cognitive decline.
So just a couple of examples of how. It [00:16:00] could be useful.
[00:16:01] Gus Herwitz: Yeah. And uh, it's kind of a social exercise. And now with my, uh, educator hat on, I'm thinking, Wow, that this could be a really useful tool for, for everyone, for, for college age students. We could program these technologies. We could develop them to model different types of convers.
Different types of behavior and yeah, have constructive dialogues, constructive debates and things like that in, in ways that, uh, we try to do in a large group setting in the classroom, but that it could work so much differently in that one-on-one setting. And that, that's just again, fascinating.
[00:16:37] Valerie Jones: Yeah, absolutely.
And, and I would say that that proactive piece of it is what I'm most interested in. How can we move to a place where we can understand the user and it can, and the device can be used to kind of proactively address. Issues you may be having. So you know, you get loneliest, you know, at eight o'clock at night because that's when you used to watch, you know, mash with your husband or [00:17:00] whatever.
And so it can proactively say, how are you feeling? And say, Here's a song that you like and, and learn to go in a walk or call someone. But if you can take those, those kind of health behaviors with permission and then use these devices to. Engage in some interactions that may be more useful to help mitigate some declines.
That's, that's, I think, super promising and not just with older folks to your, to your point, like certainly young adults are, are another population that, that really have struggled with, with loneliness. ,
[00:17:28] Gus Herwitz: and you're right that there are analytics possibilities there that are, uh, both challenging from a, a privacy perspective and all of our discussions nowadays about big data and what we do with this, but also from a recognizing patterns, identifying when someone is, is, uh, lonely or suffering about of depression or when there's, there are changes in one's life that we might not, uh, be aware of.
Without, uh, recourse to kind this longitudinal ongoing data source. So that, that's really [00:18:00] cool as well. Yeah,
[00:18:01] Valerie Jones: and you touched on a good point there. I should note that loneliness isn't just like a bummer, but it's been linked with, you know, cognitive decline with morbidity, with anxiety, with depression, with other things that.
That are a big deal. And so that loneliness piece that has become actually can increasingly important and gotten more attention because of its links with with other stuff that is pretty bad.
[00:18:25] Gus Herwitz: We are speaking with Valerie Jones from the College of Journalism and Mass Communications here at the Nebraska University of Nebraska, and when we come back we will, uh, turn to discuss her work, establishing the public insight.
[00:18:40] Valerie Jones: Momentum it's building at the University of Nebraska Lincoln with game changing work in precision agriculture, nanoscience and digital humanities. We're unlocking mysteries in brain research, solving the impossible with remote surgery using robots, and we're creating [00:19:00] bold futures with world leading research in early childhood education.
We don't slow down and we are not letting. We
[00:19:08] Gus Herwitz: are Nebraska and we are back talking with Valerie Jones from the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. Uh, we're we're going to turn now to her work on the Public Insight Lab, which she's been working to put together here at the university. Valerie, can you just start by telling us what the Public Insight Lab is?
Yeah,
[00:19:28] Valerie Jones: so the public site lab is at route, uh, hub for. Social media research, um, in this kind of academic community for faculty and, and students alike. So there are people across campus kind of doing social media related research here and there. And this is designed to be in, hopefully, will eventually be kind of a centralized spot.
For being able to, to pool some knowledge and learn how to do this effectively, and also be able to take advantage of [00:20:00] some centralized tools that can aid in the process of, of connecting social media research too.
[00:20:05] Gus Herwitz: So when you say social media research, some various things come to mind. I can think of, uh, researching actually how social media works and how it does things like missing disinformation, a common topic.
I, I can also see. Using it as a platform to conduct research using, putting information out there to see how people respond to it and engage with it, or fielding surveys. I can also see it as kind of an open source intelligence platform, looking at the universe of information that's out there and looking historically over the last three years, can we see how people's tweets have changed as different things have happened?
Are. And probably other things that, um, uh, are missing, which of the above are, are, are you, uh, doing and are you thinking of when you talk about social media research?
[00:20:53] Valerie Jones: Yeah, a great point. That's a big, that's a big, uh, umbrella there, but essentially focusing on [00:21:00] learning from the social media data. So get, so access, easier access to it, methods of analysis and, and yes, using kind of people refer to.
You know, social media data, our posts from Twitter and from a gajillion other platforms as kind of the world's largest focus group. And there's a lot of noise in there and a lot of stuff that doesn't matter. But I would argue that there's stuff that does matter in there too. And so this is about how do we learn from what people are sharing on social and use it to answer, um, research
[00:21:40] Gus Herwitz: questions.
So can you, uh, give us some examples of the, the sort of research questions you're either, you either have looked at already or that, uh, you're, you're thinking about looking at? Yeah,
[00:21:50] Valerie Jones: so one project I'm working on right now with, um, Brian Wong at the College Journalism, Mass Communications and NGTC Fellow is, Thank you.
Yes, yep. [00:22:00] Is it was brought to us by the mayor's office so that the mayor's office here in the city of Lincoln started chatting with us about vaccination information in Lincoln and. What the best sources of information were about vaccination. They're particularly wondering if when a mayor shares information about vaccination, if that is politicizing.
So is it actually more polarizing, for example, Or is it polarizing for a mayor to share that kind of information? A mayor who is inherently a political figure and what sources of information are, are best or most influential when it comes to sharing information about vaccination. And so we're looking at, just looking at Twitter and.
From the city of Lincoln, from the mayor's office, and then from other sources in Lincoln, such as the health department, and then the one of the [00:23:00] hospitals, Brian lgh to just look at. Which sources are most influential as, as defined by kind of shares and retweets and likes and those sorts of things, which top you can look at top advocates and detractors.
So are there can communities that need to be addressed or that could be addressed more specifically in the future? Like if we know that. Um, these types of groups or this group of groups is likely to, to talk about these things or to question these things. We can more proactively address or work with those groups in the future with an eye toward trying to provide information for localities about when we have health issues, major pandemic related health issues.
How do we coordinate together in sharing this information and which ways are most influential and what are opportunities that we may be overlooking? So there's one long-winded example.
[00:23:53] Gus Herwitz: That- that brings to mind just a, an observation. We we're in the midst of a [00:24:00] vast, uncontrolled experiment with government, online and government on Twitter in particular, over the, I guess it's now been many years, but over the last two presidential administrations going into three.
Every federal agency has come online and they now have a Twitter account and probably other social media accounts. I'm a too heavy of Twitter user, and the agency heads are all on Twitter as well, posting out information and tweeting stuff about their policy agenda and new rules that they're issuing.
And as a. Initial intuitive matter. It feels like this is good. This is direct democracy, this is transparency. This is getting information out to the people. But you're exactly right, that can have a, It's inherently political and that can have a polarizing effect potentially. And we just started doing this because A, everyone was doing it, and B, it seems like it should be good, but.
[00:25:00] Isn't necessarily going to have that productive effect so that it's something that we should be studying and need to be studying, but to never stopped to think, Should we be doing this?
[00:25:09] Valerie Jones: Yeah. Yeah. And aside, speaking of governmental organizations on social, uh, a prior study a couple years ago, we looked at that Instagram feed of the TSA, which if you don't follow, this is fascinating because they largely post pictures of like confiscated weapons and things that people are trying to bring on planes.
[00:25:29] Gus Herwitz: But one, one of my favorite Instagram feeds, It's so
[00:25:31] Valerie Jones: good. It's such a train wreck. But uh, we're looking to see if perceptions, if attitudes toward gun control were actually influenced by seeing all the stuff that people try to bring on on planes.
So some governmental organizations are some pretty fascinating social media problems. ,
[00:25:48] Gus Herwitz: other examples of what you're working on with the lab?
[00:25:51] Valerie Jones: Yeah. I'm also working with Lisa PytlikZillig at, uh, SB src and, and so Social and Behavioral Sciences Research [00:26:00] Consortium and the Public Policy Center and a collaborator at the Drought mitigation Center.
So designing a project, looking at social media post to see if we can start to detect vulnerabilities in the ecosystem. So this idea. With Kelly Helm Smith at the drought mitigation center of humans as sensors and it humans as kind of providers of information. So can we learn from images that people are posting of particular areas over time?
Can we see, can we more proactively detect like vulnerabilities in the ecosystem with all this data that we can kind of collect over time? And I think there are some really interesting sort of climate related. Questions, um, that we can explore as well. One example of, you mentioned earlier how obviously with social media, we can be using it proactively too to engage with certain groups of people.
We've developed like, so kind of a [00:27:00] socio-emotional health dashboard looking at conversations related to socio-emotional health at unl and there are a few other universities who are doing this as well. And these sorts of conversations could potentially be monitored to help identify kind of what the climate is on campus, help identify maybe if people are, are aware of certain resources or using certain resources and even.
Potentially not saying that we are, but we could, you know, engage with people through social media as well, who may benefit from knowing about different types of, of resources on campus.
[00:27:36] Gus Herwitz: So let's tie this back into, Are are part of the discussion. Before we took the break, we, you, I asked and you said, Yes.
Every, everyone should be on, on social. You should have your, your brand that you're working to develop on social and everyone is presenting an image that means with their social media identity and how they use this. H how do you in the work of the, the public insight, lab control [00:28:00] for. Concerns that people might not be presenting or they might be presenting a selective view of their thoughts and how they want to engage with their, the public, their, uh, peers, their colleagues, whomever.
[00:28:11] Valerie Jones: So that is, you know, social media is one source of data among many sources of data, but, You can relate that to kind of survey related bias too. Like when we, when we respond on surveys, we may give a certain more polished image of ourselves than, than, or, or the image that we think that people want to hear about.
Or maybe we're embarrassed to actually admit who we voted for. For example, totally hypothetical. It's not hypothetical. So yes, like social media research and social media data. So things that people post, I think do have to be taken, um, with a grain of salt to be sure. And there are some questions, I think where that grain of salt should maybe be bigger than for other questions.
Right. So if we're talking about. You know, climate related research and people sharing pictures of a certain spot over time and being able to look in Twitter data. We have [00:29:00] access to the full fire hose of Twitter data thanks to this social listening tool that is impartially funded by the NGTC, thank you.
You know, I don't, that seems probably a little freer of potential bias, right? Than some other questions where maybe we're, you know, I don't know, exploring people's attitudes toward certain political candidates, I don't know.
[00:29:25] Gus Herwitz: What is social media? We, we keep coming back to Twitter as the, the example and it, it is the, as you said, that the fire hose of, uh, that the Twitter feed, it's accessible.
It's largely public. It's really useful. The, we, we old folks still use the Facebook . Uh, I, I, I am told that the kids these days, they don't use the Facebook. And in fact, o only a small percentage of Americans period use Twitter, and it's less popular with younger generations. And of course, TikTok is the new hotness for the kids.
Mm-hmm. , Um, I, I should really [00:30:00] just stop , uh, stop. Um, uh, so. How do you define the universe of social media? You'd mentioned LinkedIn, uh, as well. I'll, I'll point a call out to that. Um, how do you define, uh, social media and also with the public Insight Lab? How do you, how large a net do you cast? Mm-hmm. ,
[00:30:21] Valerie Jones: I should have a great operational definition for social media, but I'll just say open interactive platforms on which you can.
Post and read other people's posts, I mean, on which you can share information and read information that other people have shared. So, you know, going back to forums and chat rooms from, you know, a decade plus ago. And blogs, those still count as social media to newer platforms such as TikTok and Reddit.
There are, there's a pretty broad spectrum I think of, of things that fall under that umbrella in terms of [00:31:00] places, interactive places to. Post thoughts and read other people's thoughts and engage. Twitter is the most open of those. So it gets talked about the most in terms of academic research, but there are tools, one of which we have access to, that does look at and actually this tool that, that.
We have called Sprinkler, goes through any sources of digital information that are publicly available, so including news forums, blogs, Reddit, WhatsApp, I think
[00:31:35] Gus Herwitz: probably Discord. That that's a, that's an important way. Yeah.
[00:31:39] Valerie Jones: Again, that's publicly available, so it's a pretty. Rich potential data set. And you can look at just at, you know, news coverage for example.
So you can look just at how regular publishers and kind of news providers are talking about are framing a particular issue, which something we talked about with droughts, right? So are [00:32:00] droughts being framed differently by news media, by different states? And does that vary by how, you know, with how people talk about them themselves?
[00:32:08] Gus Herwitz: Um, Who all is involved with the Public Insight lab? And I, I, I can just imagine this being a, a huge opportunity for interdisciplinary work. I'm thinking with all these sources of information, uh, that the opportunities to bring in statisticians and machine learning experts, that would be huge. But then you also have, I, I could just list off probably every discipline out there,
Um, uh, it's just so much data relevant to so many people. So you have questions. Who's it relevant to? What research questions? How do you analyze it? Technological methodological questions. Uh, statistical methodological questions. Um, ethics, uh, uh, hugely important there. So what, what's the universe of current collaborators and future collaborators?
[00:32:55] Valerie Jones: Yeah, universe of current collaborators. This is kind of jointly funded [00:33:00] right now through the College of Journalism, Mass Communications, then gtc. The Social and Behavioral Sciences Research consortium or center, and the Public Policy Center and collaborators have come from a variety of spots on a campus.
So, and actually in including, um, the University of Nebraska, Omaha as well. So we have, we've talked with computer science and there's a particular professor there who's interested in, in images of social. We talked with folks in in CASNR and that deal with kind of drought mitigation. And CASNR, we're talking about kind of human dimensions and wildlife management.
Um, cuz you can imagine how posts about, I'm trying to get into some detail with not too much detail. ,
[00:33:47] Gus Herwitz: I, I, you just say CASNR is the College of Agricultural Scientists and Natural Resources here at the university. Yes.
[00:33:54] Valerie Jones: And the School of Natural Resources. We have collaborators in there as well. Let's [00:34:00] see.
We have researchers who are working on a number of researchers who work on health communication related questions. There's a project dealing with opioid overdoses and the use of Narcan and how that's talked about on social media. We have psychology. There's a project folks interested in the interactions of Adderall and nicotine, which people post about on Reddit because people do this on purpose, right?
You can't give these to people. People do it on purpose. You can
[00:34:26] Gus Herwitz: learn some things. Oh, that. That is remarkable. Yeah. Mm-hmm. , as I said, fascinating ethical questions, um, for this nature of research.
[00:34:36] Valerie Jones: Yeah. And so, and so right now it's been sort of a bit of a snowball effect. So people that I know and people that are involved with the social and behavioral sciences research, Center Public Policy Center, We're talking about threat assessment sorts of questions too.
This has been used at other universities to help with threat assessment on game days, for example. So, [00:35:00] You can imagine some applications there and some folks have gotten university police or campus security involved with social listening to help understand what is happening or what may be happening. So yes, a broad variety of, of, applications to help explore research questions.
[00:35:18] Gus Herwitz: Well, this, unsurprisingly, I'm biased. Uh, this all sounds wonderful, . Um, I, I think this is a, a fascinating research, uh, both as a research platform and the specific questions and methodologies that supports. I, I guess I'll, I'll just, uh, close up with, uh, what, what's next?
What's on the horizon? Yeah.
[00:35:37] Valerie Jones: So we have a workshop coming up that we're developing that will be for. Actually, I was gonna say, on campus it'll be a virtual workshop and can involve faculty, student staff from this campus and from other campuses that we've been collaborating with. So we have people who are also doing social media research.
University of Alabama and Clemson and lsu, I don't know why [00:36:00] it's s e c schools, but it is right now. Um, and we're all coming together to put on a virtual social media workshop, um, to help people understand how to design and develop social media research related questions and studies, and also highlight some of the things that have been done because it's.
Sounds, you know, it can sound interesting or it can sound dumb. So it's most helpful to see what people have actually done and think about how it might be useful or not, um, in your field. So that's a, that's a big thing that's coming up here at the end of this spring.
[00:36:30] Gus Herwitz: Well, I look forward to, uh, seeing it and, uh, continuing.
You're just doing fascinating stuff. So continuing to see, uh, what all you, uh, continue to develop. And thank you for joining us for, uh, this discussion. And thank you listeners. Uh, we've been speaking with Valerie Jones from the College of Journalism and Mass Communications. Here at the University of Nebraska about her research and the Public Insight Lab in particular.
Thank you for joining us, uh, on this episode of Tech Refactored. I've been your host, Gus Horowitz. If you want to learn more about what [00:37:00] we're doing here at the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center, or would like to submit an idea for a future episode, you can go to our website at ngtc.unl.edu or you can follow us on Twitter at UNL underscore NGTC.
If you enjoyed the show as always, please don't forget to leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcasts. Our show is produced by Elsbeth Magilton and Lysandra Marquez and Colin McCarthy created and recorded our theme music. This podcast is part of the Menard Governance and Technology Programming Series.
Until next time, I'll see you on social.[00:38:00]