This IBSS large interdisciplinary project will study human dynamics across social media and social networks and focus on the spatiotemporal modeling of information diffusion and the inter-correlation between online activities and real world human behaviors. Two scenarios, public response to disaster warnings and referendum of controversial social topics at state or national level, will be used to validate and improve a new communication theory, Multilevel Model of Meme Diffusion (M3D). M3D is a new framework designed for describing online communication and the diffusion of memes (social media messages) via different social networks. M3D theory was developed by Spitzberg (Co-PI) in 2012 from our current NSF funded project. One key contribution of this project is to build a prototype for the San Diego Office of Emergency Services (OES) social media outreach platform, which may be applicable for other U.S. cities in the future. The design of the prototype is to facilitate rapid dissemination of official alerts and warnings notifications from OES during disaster events via multiple social media channels to targeted population (typically in certain area). The platform can identify and recruit top 1,000 social media volunteers based on their social network influence factors and help government agencies communicate more effectively to the public and be better prepared for both natural disasters and human-made crises. This project will foster the integration of research and education in multiple disciplines, including geography, linguistics, computer science, social science, and communication. The project website will be used to publicize our research findings to the general public and create a discussion forum to involve multidisciplinary researchers. Three summer specialist meetings will be organized to facilitate future multidisciplinary collaborations among researchers in the new research field of human dynamics.

The project integrates geographic information systems (GIS), geographic information science (GIScience), computational linguistics (CL), and semantic web (computer-based ontology) technologies to track and analyze public-accessible websites for progressively more defined clusters of words and phrases that characterize actual and potentially developing networks of social processes. Human and natural crises (e.g., epidemics), and hostile social movements (e.g., militia and hate groups) are examined as illustrative exemplars of the utility of such an integrated system. Website pages and web contents with identified clusters of words or phrases will be mapped (by geo-referencing their web addresses, URL, place names, gazetteers, blogs, etc.) over a world map (using GIS tools) with time stamps. The resulting map will provide a visual "information landscape" consisting of hundreds of website locations (using real world coordinate systems) containing related keywords or similar ideas. When integrated with time-series analyses, this map will allow examination of the paths and speed of information dissemination, as well as the evolving varieties of various ideas and their relationships. By creating a Semantic Web Automatic Reasoning and Mapping System (SWARMS) prototype, researchers can visualize the spread of concepts, ideas and news over time and space. Clusters of keywords and phrases will be identified and classified, and references to key ideas, provocative events, and important text sources will be collected. This innovative methodology could be applied in multiple languages and other applications, such as cellular phone text messages and social network messages (such as twitter messages).Download a THREE-page introduction.