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SUMMARY:IC Monday Seminars : Language as Influence(d) 
DTSTART:20120312T161500
DTSTAMP:20260407T194805Z
UID:6a22c7dbacef4bc7c905e5520b0e4419dd6a7c8e9257c8b997134882
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil\, Cornell University - IC Fac
 ulty candidate\nAbstract\nWhat effect does language have on people\, and w
 hat effect do people have on language?  The answers to these questions ca
 n help shape the future of social-media systems by bringing a new understa
 nding of communication and collaboration between users.\n\nI will describe
  two of my efforts to address these fundamental problems computationally\,
  exploiting very large-scale textual and social data.  The first project 
 uncovers previously unexamined contextual biases that people have when det
 ermining which opinions to focus on\, using Amazon.com helpfulness votes o
 n reviews as a case study to evaluate competing theories from sociology an
 d social psychology. The second project leverages insights from psycho- an
 d socio-linguistics and embeds them into a novel computational framework i
 n order to provide a new understanding of how key aspects of social relati
 ons between individuals are embedded in (and can be inferred from) their c
 onversational behavior. In particular\, I will discuss how power different
 ials between interlocutors are subtly revealed by how much one individual 
 immediately echoes the linguistic style of the person they are responding 
 to.\n\nThis talk includes joint work with Susan Dumais\, Michael Gamon\, J
 on Kleinberg\, Gueorgi Kossinets\, Lillian Lee and Bo Pang.\n\nBiography\n
 Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil's research aims at developing computation
 al frameworks that can lead to a better understanding of human social beha
 vior\, by unlocking the unprecedented potential of the large amounts of na
 tural language data generated online.  His work tackles problems related 
 to conversational behavior\, opinion mining\, computational semantics and 
 computational advertising.  Cristian is a PhD student in computer science
  at Cornell University.  Earlier\, he earned a master's degree from Jacob
 s University Bremen and an undergraduate degree from the University of Buc
 harest.  He is the recipient of a Yahoo! Key Scientific Challenges award 
 and his work has been featured in popular-media outlets such as Nature New
 s and MIT's Technology Review blog.
LOCATION:INM 202
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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