9 Mar 2021

Positively Negative – Shiri Melumad

Parsing Science
Business, Psychology
storytelling, lexical specificity, subjectivity, first-person perspective, transcript, emotional valence, social media, synopses, word-of-mouth, novelty, information diffusion, uniqueness, retelling, successive summarization, natural language processing, cover story, disagreeable personalization, negativity bias, telephone game, informational distortion, serial reproduction

How much can you trust people's retelling of information the've read? In episode 95, Shiri Melumad from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business discusses her research showing that when – much like the children’s game “telephone” – news is repeatedly retold, it undergoes a stylist...

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13 Oct 2020

Hot Girl Summer – Kyesha Jennings

How are Black women using social media to develop community and identity? In episode 85 we talk with Kyesha Jennings from North Carolina State University Department of English about her analysis of what the wildly popular meme "hot girl summer" - drawn from lyrics by hip-hop phenomenon, Megan Thee......

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18 Aug 2020

Picking Apart Conspiracy Theories – Tim Tangherlini

Is it an actual conspiracy, or just a theory about one? In episode 81, Tim Tangherlini from the University of California Berkeley’s Folklore Program discusses his research into how conspiracy theorists interpret and use what they believe is “hidden knowledge” to connect multiple human interactions...

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