Featured work from speaker Sinan Aral

This Thursday at 5pm we launch our fall speaker series with Sinan Aral, a quant from the MIT-Sloan School of Management, on “Social Influence and The Dynamics of Online Reputation”:

Sinan Aral will describe a series of randomized experiments that explore the population level behavioral dynamics catalyzed by identity and reputation online. He will explore some of the implications for bias in online ratings, the foundations of social advertising and the ability to generate cascades of behavior through peer to peer social influence in networks. The coming decades will likely see an emphasis on verified identities online. Aral will argue that a new science of online identity could help guide our business, platform design and social policy decisions in light of the rising importance of online reputation and social influence.

Ahead of Sinan’s talk, we wanted to suggest a couple pieces that help highlight his work:

• “Identity and Opinion: A Randomized Experiment” (PDF)
• “As Data Overflows Online, Researchers Grapple With Ethics”, New York Times
• Sinan Aral on Google Scholar
• Books, essays, and articles by Sinan Aral via MIT Libraries