Texifter Social Data and Tools: July Prize Winners

As a part of getting new users to test our sifter beta, every month this summer we are awarding 12 #datagrants to academics. All you need to do to be included in the August drawing is submit a valid historical Twitter estimate request using sifter and then send us your CV. These prizes shave thousands of dollars of costs off of your research. The July social data and tools prize winners were:

Enrique Castro Sanchez
Centre for Infection Prevention and Management at Imperial College London

“I am interested in exploring how antibiotics and antibiotic resistance are discussed in Twitter, focusing on opinion leaders driving particular perceptions. The data will allow me to explore collective Twitter responses to news and events related to antibiotics, in an effort to understand how best mobilise public opinion.” @castrocloud

Stephen Barnard
Department of Sociology at St. Lawrence University

“I plan to use the Texifter #datagrant and DiscoverText software package to extend my research on the significance of Twitter in American journalism. This may include collecting both real-time and historical tweets relating to major events in the journalistic field. Additionally, I am also hoping to use the Texifter/DiscoverText package as a grading tool, given that I often incorporate social media projects and Twitter discussion in my classes and have been searching for an efficient way to collect and grade them. This prize provides an ideal opportunity for me to experiment with new grading protocols.” @socsavvy

Gonzalo Bacigalupe
Counseling Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston

“Do ehealth, innovation in healthcare and technology, mhealth, and other forms of ehealth ideas, emerge associated to the question of health equity, social determinants of health, and overall with concerns about social justice”  @bacigalupe

James Reade
Department of Economics at the University of Reading

“As an economist I am interested in how economic agents interact with each other; in particular how networks (formally or informally – hence Twitter and other social networks) influence decision-making. I hope to use this data award to learn more about the ways in which decisions are impacted by the position somebody has within a network.” @jjreade

Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld
Political Science at the University of California – San Diego

“I am researching how individuals use Twitter to organize contentious action in authoritarian regimes. Because I have too many tweets to hand code, creating topic models is a core part of my research. Access to an Enterprise level DiscoverText account will prove invaluably productive.” @ZacharyST

Omar Jaafor
Department of Computer Science at Université Jean Monnet in Saint-Etienne

“I will be using the data for community detection and anomaly detection. I am building algorithms that allow for community and anomaly detection in networks using both the attributes of nodes (country, age, messages…) and relationships between nodes.” @lmhasher

Libby Hemphill
Communication and Information Studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology

“With Prof. Ed Lee in the IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law, I’m studying how to evaluate online protests and their achievements. We use the case study method to examine tweets related to protests of NSA surveillance. Our goal is to develop a set of metrics by which we can better evaluate the success of online protests and what they may achieve, particularly in protests whose objectives do not involve revolution or overthrow of the government. The results of the project will be useful for Internet activists, businesses, media, policymakers, and software programmers in designing, evaluating, or utilizing social media for political purposes.” @libbyh

Bill Warters
Department of Communication at Wayne State University

“I’m exploring social media commentary about the use of conflict resolution programming in schools, with a special focus on peer mediation. I’ve been gathering tweets related to peer mediation and find some interesting back-channel conversations going on that school staff probably are not aware of.” @bwarters

Nigel L. Williams
FestIM Research Project, School of Tourism at Bournemouth University

“My research examines Digital Engagement by stakeholders with Projects and Events. I’m especially interested in applying Social Network Analysis and Text Analysis to understand conversations on Social Media about Projects and Events. In the Project Domain, I will look at online narratives discussing Crossrail, a London transport project. For Events, I will apply the data and software to examine the impact of online narratives on a costal destination” @Org_PM

Meredith Clark
Journalism & Mass Communication at UNC-CH

“I will use the prize to extend my research into digital media use and connectivity among minorities.” @meredithclark

Stephen K Tagg
Marketing at Strathclyde Business School 

“To produce academic articles on dynamic modelling of sentiments in the Scottish Independence Referendum debate. This is in cooperation with a colleague in the school of government (Dr Mark Shephard). Techniques for the analysis of unstructured data in the R software environment will be used: qdap, tm and Austin.” @stephenktagg

Bill Wilkerson
Political Science at SUNY Oneonta 

“I am interested in learning about how the US Supreme Court is discussed on Twitter. What cases draw interest? What network patterns exist in this discussion? I hope that there is sufficient geo-location data to use this as part of the research as well.” @bill_wilkerson

Remember: All you need to do to be included in the July drawing is submit a valid historical Twitter estimate request using sifter and then send us your CV.