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Using lobbying data from OpenSecrets.org, we offer several experiments applying machine learning techniques to predict if a piece of legislation (US bill) has been subjected to lobbying activities or not. We also investigate the influence…
Fashion is a perpetual topic in human social life, and the mass has the penchant to emulate what large city residents and celebrities wear. Undeniably, New York City is such a bellwether large city with all kinds of fashion leadership.…
Obesity and diabetes epidemics are affecting about a third and tenth of US population, respectively, capturing the attention of the nation and its institutions. Social media provides an open forum for communication between individuals and…
"Media events" such as political debates generate conditions of shared attention as many users simultaneously tune in with the dual screens of broadcast and social media to view and participate. Are collective patterns of user behavior…
Organizations have long used deception as a means to exert influence in pursuit of their agendas. In particular, information operations such as propaganda distribution, support of antigovernment protest, and revelation of politically and…
Recent advances on human dynamics have focused on the normal patterns of human activities, with the quantitative understanding of human behavior under extreme events remaining a crucial missing chapter. This has a wide array of potential…
Human trafficking, the commercial exploitation of individuals, is a gross violation of human rights and harms societies, economies, health and development. The related disciplines of Operations Management (OM), Analytics, and Operations…
This article presents results from the first statistically significant study of traffic forecasts in transportation infrastructure projects. The sample used is the largest of its kind, covering 210 projects in 14 nations worth US$59…
Over the last 70 years, we, humans, have created an economic market where attention is being captured and turned into money thanks to advertising. During the last two decades, leveraging research in psychology, sociology, neuroscience and…
Gender-based violence (GBV) is a human-generated crisis, existing in various forms, including offline, via physical and sexual violence, and now online via harassment and trolling. While studying social media campaigns for different domains…
Social networks play a fundamental role in the diffusion of information. However, there are two different ways of how information reaches a person in a network. Information reaches us through connections in our social networks, as well as…
Online advertising is the major source of income for a large portion of Internet Services. There exists a body of literature aiming at optimizing ads engagement, understanding the privacy and ethical implications of online advertising, etc.…
In 2015, 391,000 people were injured due to distracted driving in the US. One of the major reasons behind distracted driving is the use of cell-phones, accounting for 14% of fatal crashes. Social media applications have enabled users to…
In recent years, social media has become one of the most popular platforms for communication. These platforms allow users to report real-world incidents that might swiftly and widely circulate throughout the whole social network. A social…
Snapchat, like many other social platforms, provides mechanisms for its users to report content and private/public interactions that violate their sense of safety and decency. From our experience and common sense, we can safely assume that…
Individuals are often influenced by the behavior of others, for instance because they wish to obtain the benefits of coordinated actions or infer otherwise inaccessible information. In such situations this social influence decreases the ex…
Public transportation systems often suffer from unexpected fluctuations in demand and disruptions, such as mechanical failures and medical emergencies. These fluctuations and disruptions lead to delays and overcrowding, which are…
In many developing countries, public transit plays an important role in daily life. However, few existing methods have considered the influence of public transit in their models. In this work, we present a dual-perspective view of the…
Public special events, like sports games, concerts and festivals are well known to create disruptions in transportation systems, often catching the operators by surprise. Although these are usually planned well in advance, their impact is…
In traditional models for word-of-mouth recommendations and viral marketing, the objective function has generally been based on reaching as many people as possible. However, a number of studies have shown that the indiscriminate spread of a…