The Journal of Communication just published online the article “Network Effects in the Academic Market: Mechanisms for Hiring and Placing PhDs in Communication (2007–2014)“, co-authored by DiMeNet members Bo Mai, Jiaying Liu and Sandra González-Bailón.

The May 2015 special issue of The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science will feature articles by Sandra González-Bailón and Sijia Yang. González-Bailón’s article “Signals of Public Opinion in Online Communication: A Comparison of Methods and Data Sources” was co-authored by Georgios Paltoglou. Yang’s article “Constructing Recommendation Systems for Effective Health Messages Using Content, Collaborative, and Hybrid Algorithms” was co-authored by Joseph N. Cappella and Sungkyoung Lee.

Sandra González-Bailón will be speaking at the Network and Criminality Workshop on April 21st at the University of Oxford Mathematical Institute. Her talk is entitled “Core-Periphery Dynamics in Protest Networks”.

Spanish newspaper El Periódico de Catalunya featured DiMeNet member Tim Libert’s research on third-party tracking. Initially appearing in the March 2015 issue of Communication of the ACM , Libert’s article found that 91 percent of health related web pages initiate HTTP requests to third-parties.

Josh Becker, DiMeNet member, will be presenting a paper and a poster in two forthcoming conferences:

• Becker, J. Collective Decisions as Coordination Processes – The Influence of Hubs. Computational Social Science Summit. Evanston, IL. May 2015.
• Becker, J. Complex Coordination: The Influence of Hubs on Collective Outcomes. NetSci. Zaragoza, Spain. June, 2015.

Sijia Yang has been awarded a fellowship to attend the 2015 Political Networks Conference. He will discuss his work on “Semantic Networks and Public Opinion”, forthcoming as a chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Political Networks.

Vice’s Motherboard interviewed DiMeNet member Tim Libert last week about his research on third-party tracking. Libert found that 91 percent of health related web pages initiate HTTP requests to third-parties. “This isn’t just commercial sites who need to turn a profit, these are organizations you trust: the government, non-profits, universities,” said Libert.

The paper “Network Effects in the Academic Market: Mechanisms for Hiring and Placing Ph.D.s in Communication (2007-2014)” has been accepted at this year’s International Communication Association conference, to be held in San Juan, Puerto Rico. DiMeNet member Bo Mai will be presenting the research.

---

Abstract: We analyze hiring and placement dynamics across communication Ph.D. programs using data collected in 2014. We assess changes compared to data collected in 2007 (as reported in Barnett, Danowski, Feeley, & Stalker, 2010), and we identify the factors that underlie the formation of recruitment ties. Our findings challenge prior conclusions that faculty-hiring patterns offer a good proxy to the quality of doctoral education. Instead, we find evidence that the recruitment network results from inter-organizational dynamics that are likely to emerge from faculty mobility; these dynamics are manifested in the form of reciprocity, transitivity, and cumulative advantage. Once we control for these network characteristics, institutional prestige, faculty seniority, and reputational rankings modestly drive the formation of recruitment ties.

Mason Porter will be visiting the DiMeNet group next week. He will give a talk on multilayer networks on Monday 15 Dec at 10:00am in room 224.