Kristina Lerman
Biographic Data
| ID | 1898727 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kristina Lerman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kristina |
| FAMILY NAME | Lerman |
| SIGNATURE | LERMAN K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Southern California |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5071-0575 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Leveraging machine learning to identify gendered stereotypes and body image concerns on diet and fitness online forums
Social Computing for Post-Earthquake Vulnerability and Resilience Assessment
Social media offers significant potential to transform disaster communication and, in turn, enhance community resilience to seismic events. This study integrates social media sentiment with hazard data, damage assessments, and social vulnerability indices to address critical gaps in disaster resilience research. While prior work has highlighted the value of social media for real-time insights, few studies have effectively correlated sentiment wit…
How out-group animosity can shape partisan divisions: A model of affective polarization
Politically divided societies are also often divided emotionally: people like and trust those with similar political views (in-group favoritism) while disliking and distrusting those with different views (out-group animosity). This phenomenon, called affective polarization, influences individual decisions, including seemingly apolitical choices such as whether to wear a mask or what car to buy. We present a dynamical model of decision-making in a…
Evaluating resilience of urban lifelines against flooding in China using social media data
Analyzing urban scaling laws in the United States over 115 years
The scaling relations between city attributes and population are emergent and ubiquitous aspects of urban growth. Quantifying these relations and understanding their theoretical foundation, however, is difficult due to the challenge of defining city boundaries and a lack of historical data to study city dynamics over time and space. To address this issue, we analyze scaling between city infrastructure and population across 857 metropolitan areas …
Road network evolution in the urban and rural United States since 1900
Friendship Paradox Redux: Your Friends Are More Interesting Than You
Feld's friendship paradox states that "your friends have more friends than you, on average." This paradox arises because extremely popular people, despite being rare, are overrepresented when averaging over friends. Using a sample of the Twitter firehose, we confirm that the friendship paradox holds for >98% of Twitter users. Because of the directed nature of the follower graph on Twitter, we are further able to confirm more detailed forms of the…
Political polarization drives online conversations about Covid ‐19 in the United States
Since the outbreak in China in late 2019, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread around the world and has come to dominate online conversations. By linking 2.3 million Twitter users to locations within the United States, we study in aggregate how political characteristics of the locations affect the evolution of online discussions about COVID-19. We show that COVID-19 chatter in the United States is largely shaped by political polarization. …
Characterizing the 2016 Russian IRA influence campaign
Analyzing the Digital Traces of Political Manipulation: The 2016 Russian Interference Twitter Campaign
Until recently, social media was seen to promote democratic discourse on social and political issues. However, this powerful communication platform has come under scrutiny for allowing hostile actors to exploit online discussions in an attempt to manipulate public opinion. A case in point is the ongoing U.S. Congress investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election campaign, with Russia accused of, among other things, using trolls …
Language, demographics, emotions, and the structure of online social networks
Social networks affect individuals’ economic opportunities and well-being. However, few of the factors thought to shape networks—culture, language, education, and income—were empirically validated at scale. To fill this gap, we collected a large number of social media posts from a major US metropolitan area. By associating these posts with US Census tracts through their locations, we linked socioeconomic indicators to group-level signals extracte…
Computational social scientist beware: Simpson’s paradox in behavioral data
The Impact of Network Flows on Community Formation in Models of Opinion Dynamics
We study dynamics of opinion formation in a network of coupled agents. As the network evolves to a steady state, opinions of agents within the same community converge faster than those of other agents. This framework allows us to study how network topology and network flow, which mediates the transfer of opinions between agents, both affect the formation of communities. In traditional models of opinion dynamics, agents are coupled via conservativ…
Social Informatics: Using Big Data to Understand Social Behavior
Social Informatics: Using Big Data to Understand Social Behavior
The Impact of Network Flows on Community Formation in Models of Opinion Dynamics
We study dynamics of opinion formation in a network of coupled agents. As the network evolves to a steady state, opinions of agents within the same community converge faster than those of other agents. This framework allows us to study how network topology and network flow, which mediates the transfer of opinions between agents, both affect the formation of communities. In traditional models of opinion dynamics, agents are coupled via conservativ…
Language, demographics, emotions, and the structure of online social networks
Social networks affect individuals’ economic opportunities and well-being. However, few of the factors thought to shape networks—culture, language, education, and income—were empirically validated at scale. To fill this gap, we collected a large number of social media posts from a major US metropolitan area. By associating these posts with US Census tracts through their locations, we linked socioeconomic indicators to group-level signals extracte…
Computational social scientist beware: Simpson’s paradox in behavioral data
Analyzing the Digital Traces of Political Manipulation: The 2016 Russian Interference Twitter Campaign
Until recently, social media was seen to promote democratic discourse on social and political issues. However, this powerful communication platform has come under scrutiny for allowing hostile actors to exploit online discussions in an attempt to manipulate public opinion. A case in point is the ongoing U.S. Congress investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election campaign, with Russia accused of, among other things, using trolls …
Characterizing the 2016 Russian IRA influence campaign
Political polarization drives online conversations about Covid ‐19 in the United States
Since the outbreak in China in late 2019, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread around the world and has come to dominate online conversations. By linking 2.3 million Twitter users to locations within the United States, we study in aggregate how political characteristics of the locations affect the evolution of online discussions about COVID-19. We show that COVID-19 chatter in the United States is largely shaped by political polarization. …
Friendship Paradox Redux: Your Friends Are More Interesting Than You
Feld's friendship paradox states that "your friends have more friends than you, on average." This paradox arises because extremely popular people, despite being rare, are overrepresented when averaging over friends. Using a sample of the Twitter firehose, we confirm that the friendship paradox holds for >98% of Twitter users. Because of the directed nature of the follower graph on Twitter, we are further able to confirm more detailed forms of the…
Road network evolution in the urban and rural United States since 1900
Evaluating resilience of urban lifelines against flooding in China using social media data
Analyzing urban scaling laws in the United States over 115 years
The scaling relations between city attributes and population are emergent and ubiquitous aspects of urban growth. Quantifying these relations and understanding their theoretical foundation, however, is difficult due to the challenge of defining city boundaries and a lack of historical data to study city dynamics over time and space. To address this issue, we analyze scaling between city infrastructure and population across 857 metropolitan areas …
How out-group animosity can shape partisan divisions: A model of affective polarization
Politically divided societies are also often divided emotionally: people like and trust those with similar political views (in-group favoritism) while disliking and distrusting those with different views (out-group animosity). This phenomenon, called affective polarization, influences individual decisions, including seemingly apolitical choices such as whether to wear a mask or what car to buy. We present a dynamical model of decision-making in a…
Leveraging machine learning to identify gendered stereotypes and body image concerns on diet and fitness online forums
Social Computing for Post-Earthquake Vulnerability and Resilience Assessment
Social media offers significant potential to transform disaster communication and, in turn, enhance community resilience to seismic events. This study integrates social media sentiment with hazard data, damage assessments, and social vulnerability indices to address critical gaps in disaster resilience research. While prior work has highlighted the value of social media for real-time insights, few studies have effectively correlated sentiment wit…
Computer Science (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Social media (8 works) · Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence (6 works) · Complex Network Analysis Techniques (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Social Media and Politics (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Misinformation and Its Impacts (4 works) · World Wide Web (4 works)