The School of Information Studies has launched a new research center that will focus on collecting and analyzing big data.

The Center for Computational and Data Sciences will help to build a network of scholars and advance research that helps understand or solve social and political issues, said Jenny Stromer-Galley, who is leading the center, in an email. The center will do this by collecting, storing and analyzing large amounts of data.

The center will specialize in analyzing unstructured data, or text, said Stromer-Galley, who is an iSchool professor known for her work on presidential campaigning.

“For example we have now collected the entire set of submissions and comments from Reddit,” Stromer-Galley said. “We have the techniques to begin to understand what people are saying, to whom and to understand a variety aspects of behavior on those places from trolling, to influence, to opinion change.”

One project Stromer-Galley and her team are currently working on is collecting all of the messages and comments on social media about presidential candidates. They’ve developed algorithms to automatically sort the different messages and comments in more than 20 categories.

“Our goal is to create a website that displays in real-time what the candidates are saying on social media so that we can increase transparency and accountability of our candidates,” Stromer-Galley said.

She added that journalists and the public are their target audiences for this site.

Stromer-Galley added that she expects to have faculty from across the Syracuse University campus be involved in the center.

“The best way to share our knowledge, and data, is to find ways to bring faculty from across the disciplines together,” Stromer-Galley said. “In the increasingly data-centric world we live in, analyzing it requires many skills and I hope the Center can help foster that community on campus and beyond.”

iSchool staff members with expertise in software development and grants administration, will be assisting Stromer-Galley at the center, Jeff Stanton, interim dean of the iSchool, said in an email.

Stanton encourages people to come to the iSchool so they can learn about different research interests. He added that that the center will allow researchers from various parts of the university to share ideas and tools for accomplishing work.

“Most researchers begin with a question of broad societal interest — for example, what sources of information may help new immigrants adapt to U.S. society more successfully — and then looks for sources of data that may help to answer that question,” Stanton said.

The purpose of the center, Stanton said, is “to enhance the reputation of the university and in so doing to help to attract research funding to support the work of students and faculty.”

Published on October 5, 2015 at 9:59 pm

Contact Connor: clried@syr.edu