Title: Measuring Engagement Online and At Risk Offline

Recent years have witnessed a global declining trust in major institutions including governments, media, and each other. Many believe that the spread of misinformation, disinformation, and polarized narratives in cyberspace had a great impact on the deteriorated public trust. In particular, social media extends the capabilities of sophisticated targeting of information campaigns and diffusion of manipulated views. To better understand the cyber-social phenomena, I will present a series of measurement studies that characterize social media users' engagement in misinformation and hyper-partisan topics. These studies reveal the characteristics of the vulnerable online population in misinformation consumption, the structural advantages in information campaigns, and the connections between online engagement and offline risk in public health and violence. This line of research helps reveal new opportunities to support online at-risk users and to recommend timely interventions to mitigate offline risks.

In the last decade, social media platforms have grown in popularity, and now Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are readily available on mobile devices, continuously connecting users to a stream of information.

This workshop aims to:

1. highlight current social media research opportunities and challenges, and
2. identify and connect social media researchers. The workshop includes the following parts:
   1. Social Media Research Competition (SMRC)
   2. Invited speaker: Dr. Yu-Ru Lin (University of Pittsburgh)

Workshop Agenda 

1:00 pm -1:15 pm: Welcome and Workshop Agenda (Catherine Dumas)

1:15 pm - 1:45 pm: “Not all my friends are friends”: Audience-group-based nudges for managing location privacy," Presenters: Vivek Singh (Rutgers University)

1:45 pm - 2:15 pm: Analysis of Geotagging Behavior: Do Geotagged Users Represent the Twitter Population?, Presenters: Amir Karami (University of Alabama at Birmingham)

2:15 pm - 2:45 pm: From information seeking to information avoidance: Understanding the health information behavior during a global health crisis, Presenter: Saira Hanif Soroya (University of the Punjab, Lahore)

2:45 pm - 3:15 pm: Break

3:15 pm - 3:30 pm: Introduce the Invited Speaker (Catherine Dumas)

3:30 pm - 4:30 pm: Measuring Engagement Online and At Risk Offline, Presenter: Dr. Yu-Ru Lin (University of Pittsburgh)

4:30 pm - 4:50 pm: Award Ceremony (Catherine Dumas)

4:50 pm - 5:00 pm Wrap up (Catherine Dumas)

Top Social Media Research Papers

The following social media research will be presented in the workshop:

• "Not all my friends are friends": Audience-group-based nudges for managing location privacy | Presenters: Vivek Singh (Rutgers University)
• Analysis of Geotagging Behavior: Do Geotagged Users Represent the Twitter Population? | Presenters: Amir Karami (University of Alabama at Birmingham)
• From information seeking to information avoidance: Understanding the health information behavior during a global health crisis | Presenter: Saira Hanif Soroya (University of the Punjab, Lahore)

Organizers:
Catherine Dumas, Simmons University
Amir Karami, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Loni Hagen, University of South Florida
Aylin Imeri (Ilhan), Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf
Tara Zimmerman, Texas Woman's University