We utilize a variety of methods from mining data on social media to conducting controlled experiments to interviewing users. Our work aims to understand the significance of people’s digital traces and to leverage this information for positive social good.
We are part of Jacobs Institute’s Connective Media hub at Cornell Tech. Some of our research is conducted within the Connected Experiences Lab. If you are interested in working with us, please get in touch by contacting us below!
4/2016 Paper studying view duration of YouTube videos to appear in ICWSM; the paper and dataset are both available below
4/2016 Mor gave a keynote at SNOW in Montreal on April 12.
2/2016 Mor is an invited speaker at the 9th International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM 2016) in San Francisco on February 25.
Associate Professor
Post-doc
PhD Student
PhD Student
PhD Student
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Visiting Professor
Visiting Professor
As part of the AOL Connected Experiences Laboratory, we look at how data from mobile devices, sensors, as well as new cryptographic techniques and protocols can enable a socio-technical infrastructure to provide awareness, trust and meaningful connections between physically co-located individuals, including buildings, offices, and public spaces. Such infrastructure will empower people to make better connections and communication in their local communities, with long term impact on participation and democracy.
The goal of this project is to advance our understanding of the psychological mechanisms behind people's attention, as reflected through their interactions with digital content. In particular, we focus on the context of actions that people take online without any experimental intervention and examine how context affects behavior. We draw on theories from a wide range of fields to address questions that pertain to individual's attention to content, expectations for attention from others and the value in getting that attention. To that end, we harness machine learning methods as well as language and statistical modeling to analyze signals of human attention as they occurs naturally outside of lab settings.
Minsu Park, Mor Naaman, Jonah Berger. A Data-driven Study of View Duration on YouTube. In Proceedings, ACM International Conference on Web Logs and Social Media. (ICWSM 2016), May 2016, Cologne, Germany
Using two distinct YouTube datasets, we examine whether and how indicators of collective preferences and reactions are associated with view duration of videos.
Xiao Ma, Jeff Hancock, Mor Naaman. Anonymity, Intimacy and Self-Disclosure in Social Media. In Proceedings, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. (CHI 2016), May 2015, San Jose, USA
We conducted an experiment to study the relationship between content intimacy and self-disclosure in social media, and how anonymity and audience type (social ties vs. people nearby) moderate that relationship.
Nir Grinberg, P. Alex Dow, Lada A. Adamic, and Mor Naaman. Changes in Engagement Before and After Posting to Facebook. In Proceedings, ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. (CHI 2016), May 2015, San Jose, USA
Changes in Engagement Before and After Posting to Facebook
CHI 2016 [Full Paper]
Best Paper Honorable Mention
The study identified a unique pattern of engagement that accompanies posting on Facebook. Using observational data analysis we show that after posting content, people visit the site more often, are more attentive to content from friends, and even interact more with friends content.
Raz Schwarz, Mor Naaman, Rannie Teodoro. Editorial Algorithms: Using Social Media to Discover and Report Local News. In Proceedings, ACM International Conference on Web Logs and Social Media. (ICWSM 2015), May 2015, Cambridge, England
Editorial Algorithms: Using Social Media to Discover and Report Local News
ICWSM 2015 [Full Paper]
We discuss CityBeat, a large-screen visualization that builds on machine learning techniques to expose hyper-local events in New York City from social media data. We deployed it with some national and local media and describe the gap between the journalistic needs and what our algorithm could provide.
Minsu Park, Ingmar Weber, Mor Naaman, Sarah Vieweg. Understanding Musical Diversity via Online Social Media. In Proceedings, ACM International Conference on Web Logs and Social Media. (ICWSM 2015), May 2015, Cambridge, England
Using data from users of Last.fm and Twitter, we design and evaluate a novel measure for computing diversity of musical tastes, and investigate its relationships with socioeconomic status and personal traits such as openness and degree of interest in music.
David Flatow, Mor Naaman, Ke Eddie Xie, Yana Volkovich, Yaron Kanza. On the Accuracy of Hyper-local Geotagging of Social Media Content. In Proceedings, the ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM 2015). March 2015, Shanghai, China.
Can we use geotagged social media to identify phrases that correspond to hyper-local geographic features? Does the geographic spread of such phrases differ between services or device types? (the answer to both is yes).
Funda Kivran-Swaine, Jeremy Ting, Jed Richards Brubaker, Rannie Teodoro, Mor Naaman.Understanding Loneliness in Social Awareness Streams: Expressions and Responses. Eighth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. (ICWSM 2014)
Understanding Loneliness in Social Awareness Streams: Expressions and Responses
ICWSM 2014 [Full Paper]
Content analysis of tweets expressing loneliness exposes some key patterns in how people talk about loneliness on Twitter, as well as when such posts are likely to receive a response from friends and followers.
Rannie Teodoro, Pinar Ozturk, Mor Naaman, Winter Mason, and Janne Lindqvist. The Motivations and Experiences of the On-demand Mobile Workforce. In Proceedings, ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. (CSCW 2014), February 2014
We performed semi-structured interviews with workers of on-demand mobile workforce applications that match users with physical world tasks to expose their motivations, practices, and experiences.
Jessa Lingel, Mor Naaman and danah boyd. City, Self, Network: Transnational Migrants and Online Identity Work. In Proceedings, ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. (CSCW 2014), February 2014
What are the challenges new immigrants face in online self-presentation and use of Facebook? We did a qualitative study to find out.
Grinberg, Nir, Mor Naaman, Blake Shaw, and Gilad Lotan. "Extracting Diurnal Patterns of Real World Activity from Social Media." In ICWSM. 2013.
We developed methods to identify how people talk about real-world activities on social media. By examining activities such as nightlife, food or shopping we peek at the fundamental rhythm of human behavior at a city level and observe how it was disrupted during Hurricane Sandy.
We're located at Cornell Tech. Come by and say hi!
111 8th Ave
