Collaborative Research: Social Diffusion in Online Media for Reaching Hidden Communities and Underrepresented Groups

这个项目的目标是使用同伴驱动的招募，从隐藏的、代表性不足的或地下的在线社区中取样并发送信息。具体而言，该项目将研究如何使用社交媒体从隐藏的社区中提取信息并将信息分发给隐藏的社区，确定将要开发的框架是否可以为社区成员的行为提供新的见解，推进点对点抽样技术的科学，并确定对社交媒体的信任是否会影响点对点招聘过程。这个项目将有助于回答以下问题。我们如何才能最好地应用与在线社交媒体相关的计算资源，以改进从隐藏人群中收集信息并向其分发信息的过程？最先进的偏差估计器中已知的缺陷在多大程度上影响了点对点抽样的有效性，以及新的估计器和/或抽样设计能在多大程度上纠正这些缺陷？个人对各种社交媒体（尤其是Facebook和电子邮件）的信任程度有多大？信任程度对点对点招聘过程有多大影响，尤其是对隐藏或边缘化群体的认同？这些都是重要的问题，它们的答案将有助于推动社会科学和计算科学的发展，以及它们的协同结合。更广泛的影响该项目将提供一个开源系统，用于与在线社区进行远程交互，特别是但不限于隐藏社区。该项目将有一个实质性的教育组成部分，因为拟议的系统将有一个模拟模式，使其能够用于课堂项目。通过提供一种方法来解决影响未被充分代表的群体的问题，它也将为这些群体的成员提供有意义的计算机研究和教育机会。此外，它将建立一个跨学科的校际实验室，用于在线社会网络研究，这将使现有的工作关系制度化，并为正在进行的网络科学系列研讨会提供一个场所。

The goal of this project is to use peer-driven recruitment to sample from and send information to hidden, underrepresented, or underground online communities. Specifically, the project will examine how social media can be used to extract information from and distribute information to hidden communities, determine whether the framework to be developed can provide new insights into the behavior of community members, advance the science of peer-to-peer sampling techniques, and determine whether trust in social media affects the peer-to-peer recruitment process.Intellectual MeritThis project will serve to answer the following questions. How can we best apply computational resources that are associated with online social media to improve processes for collecting information from and distributing information to hidden populations? To what degree do the known deficiencies in state-of-the-art bias estimators impact the effectiveness of peer-to-peer-based sampling and how well can these deficiencies be corrected by new estimators and/or sampling design? To what extent do individuals invest trust in various social media (particularly Facebook and email) and how much does degree-of-trust affect peer-to-peer recruitment processes, especially with respect to identification with a hidden or marginalized group? These are important questions, and answers to them will serve to advance the both the social and computational sciences, and their synergistic combinations. Broader ImpactsThis project will provide an open source system for remotely interacting with online communities, particularly but not limited to hidden communities. The project will have a substantial education component in that the proposed system will have a simulation mode that will enable it to be used for class projects. By providing a way to address problems that impact underrepresented groups, it will also provide meaningful research and educational opportunities in computing to members of those groups. In addition, it will establish an interdisciplinary, intercollegiate laboratory in online social network research that will institutionalize preexisting working relationships and provide a home for an ongoing seminar series in network science.