The Facebook "Experiment" (was <nettime> Facebook's Mood Study: Orwellian newspeak 2.0)

[Gregory Foster]

On 7/9/14, 7:07 AM, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> [SCG (Jul 1)] Facebook's Psychological Experiments Connected to Department of Defense
> Research on Civil Unrest
> http://scgnews.com/facebooks-psychological-experiments-connected-to-department-of-defense-research-on-civil-unrest

Thanks for sending this, Eugen.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - "Experimental evidence
of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks" by Adam D.
I. Kramera, Jamie E. Guillory, and Jeffrey T. Hancock:
http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full

US Department of Defense - The Minerva Research Initiative:
http://minerva.dtic.mil/

> There have been rumors that the research described in the recent publication "Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 111 no. 24) was funded by the Department of Defense or its Minerva Research Initiative. This is not the case. Though a study co-author did receive a Minerva grant in the past, that effort was unrelated to the research of interest.
> 
> The Minerva Research Initiative is committed to ensuring informed consent by its research subjects and abides by all human subject protection regulations for its domestic and international work alike. For further questions or any press inquiries, please contact DOD Public Affairs.


Here's some insight on the Minerva Research Initiative (HT the article
Eugen sent):

Guardian - Earth Insight (Jun 12) - "Pentagon preparing for mass civil
breakdown" by @nafeezahmed:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/jun/12/pentagon-mass-civil-breakdown

Jeffrey T. Hancock was one of the co-authors of the Facebook study.  He
was funded by the DoD's Minerva Research Initiative in 2009 to research
"Modeling Discourse and Social Dynamics in Authoritarian Regimes".
http://infosci.cornell.edu/faculty/jeffrey-hancock

The authors of the Facebook study thanked Cornell colleague Michael Macy
for his feedback.  Macy is currently funded by the DoD's Minerva
Research Initiative in 2014 to study "Tracking Critical-Mass Outbreaks
in Social Contagions".
http://infosci.cornell.edu/faculty/michael-macy

Here's all of the funded research:
http://minerva.dtic.mil/funded.html

gf

-- 
Gregory Foster || gfoster at entersection.org
@gregoryfoster <> http://entersection.com/