*FINAL REMINDER --- Applied Statistics Workshop TOMORROW (10/31) at 12 noon*
*Lunch provided --- All are welcome *
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Dear workshop community,
We will convene for the Applied Statistics Workshop (Gov 3009) tomorrow on
Wednesday (10/31).
The speakers are* Edward Kao *and* Steven Smith *(MIT Lincoln Laboratory)
who will be presenting their work "Network Causal Inference on Social Media
Influence Operations" (paper link <https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.04109>).
*Where:* CGIS Knafel Building, Room K354 (see this link
<https://map.harvard.edu/?bld=04471&level=9> for directions).
*When: *Wednesday, October 31st --- 12 noon - 1:30 pm.
*Abstract:* Estimating influence on social media networks is an important
practical and theoretical problem, especially because this new medium is
widely exploited as a platform for disinformation and propaganda. This
paper introduces a novel approach to influence estimation on social media
networks and applies it to the real-world problem of characterizing active
influence operations on Twitter during the 2017 French presidential
elections. The new influence estimation approach attributes impact by
accounting for narrative propagation over the network using a network
causal inference framework applied to data arising from graph sampling and
filtering. This causal framework infers the difference in outcome as a
function of exposure, in contrast to existing approaches that attribute
impact to activity volume or topological features, which do not explicitly
measure nor necessarily indicate actual network influence. Cramer-Rao
estimation bounds are derived for parameter estimation as a step in the
causal analysis, and used to achieve geometrical insight on the causal
inference problem. The ability to infer high causal influence is
demonstrated on real-world social media accounts that are later
independently confirmed to be either directly affiliated or correlated with
foreign influence operations using evidence supplied by the U.S. Congress
and journalistic reports.
*All are welcome! Lunch is provided! *
Best,
Connor Jerzak
Applied Statistics Workshop -- Graduate Student Coordinator
An anonymous feedback form for the workshop can be found here at this link
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScp4lPVBtp4Akf6K6ggmfcTUSIUHEJX89-CU8HWrQPpe9pjTw/viewform?usp=sf_link>.
Workshop listserv sign-up at this link
<https://lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/gov3009-l>.
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