UCLA Researchers Use Big Data Expertise to Create a News Media Resource on the COVID-19 Crisis

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In the Department of Communication at UCLA, the Co-Mind Lab has rerouted some of its “big data” projects to create an informational resource about the coronavirus crisis. This resource offers members of the UCLA community and wider public a bird’s-eye view of news media coverage of the crisis, including a Los Angeles “dashboard” that maps positive cases in the county.

https://co-mind.org/cogmedia/browse/covid.php

Dr. Rick Dale, professor in the Department of Communication, who leads the Co-Mind Lab, further discusses this important and timely research in the following piece:

As social scientists, we ask questions that are of fundamental importance to the situation: How is the media covering the crisis? What are changing themes or trends in wider news coverage? How can we quantify and explore the public’s conception of the health crisis? It is now well established that public discourse and behavior—social and cognitive issues—are also of great importance to public health.

The CogMedia (“Cognition and Media”) project is a new endeavor of our group, and its goal is to find linkages between cognitive science and media activity. For example, our group is testing how research findings in the lab regarding language processing (how the mind processes language) can help to predict the spread of information in news media.

The project collects and analyzes many thousands of news items from major media each week. Despite its early stage of development, we decided to release information and resources to the public. One free resource is an application programming interface (API), so other researchers can use CogMedia’s data in a programming language called R. A second resource includes a news consumption platform for members of the public to track major news themes outside of “big tech” filtering.

At the onset of the crisis here, we reworked our project’s underlying code into a dashboard devoted to COVID-19. This dashboard is an “at-a-glance” tool, using automatic algorithms and data. We have hundreds of thousands of stories, and so we have a record of how news coverage has evolved, along with incoming coverage by the hundreds or thousands of stories per day. It seemed important to shape this information into something of direct relevance to this rapidly moving situation, and share it widely for all who may take interest in our approach.

For example, one resource we share is a kind of analysis on news stories referred to as the “newsgraph.” Stories that are related in their language, such as the words they use, can be interconnected into a diagram. This network diagram quickly reveals “clusters” of news stories and themes.

Consider the diagram below, from the morning of my writing (March 26th, 2020). We see the largest cluster of related news stories is the passage by the Senate of the coronavirus assistance bill. With this visualization, users can quickly see where much of the media attention is going. The network marks stories that are widely shared on social media (the size of the dot) and the relative recency (new stories are in red).

We also created a specific Los Angeles dashboard in the system. Here we have used Google’s API and case lists from LA Public Health to offer an animated map of positive test results across the region. In addition, we filtered results to prominent news items from the Los Angeles Times and a Twitter feed from LA Public Health itself. We will continue to expand this offering over the coming days and weeks as we organize our own information and integrate information from other sources.

More broadly, the Department of Communication at UCLA specializes in this “big data” research. Faculty in the department are developing cutting-edge tools and studies. They are creating an unprecedented TV News archive called NewsScape, political and social media analysis, and media-analysis applications using state-of-the-art machine learning and other quantitative methods. For example, the NewsScape contains over 15 years of wide ranging TV news, and faculty Tim Groeling and collaborators are continuously adding to the archive. The Department of Communication will be admitting its first graduate students in a new Ph.D. program this fall, and there will be great interest among our new students in using these tools to further our understanding of the lead up and evolution of the present crisis.

 

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A Global Lifeboat: Evolution and Kindness in the Time of Coronavirus (Audio)

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Female Neighbor Helping Senior Woman With Shopping
Photo Credit: https://salud-america.org

Dr. Daniel Fessler, Anthropologist and Director of the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute, discusses how an understanding of humanity’s past and present can help us to meet the personal, social, and political challenges posed by the novel coronavirus pandemic. Listen here:

You may also listen to the audio on YouTube HERE.

 

Check out our previous stories related to the research on kindness at UCLA:

Doing Good with Dr. Fessler

$20 Million Gift Establishes the UCLA Bedari Kindness Institute in the Division of Social Sciences

 

Subscribe to LA Social Science and be the first to learn more insight and knowledge from UCLA social science experts in upcoming video/audio sessions and posts dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

 

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UCLA Voting Rights Project Releases Recommendations for Implementing Vote-by-Mail Program

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Photo Credit: Nicholas Konrad, The New York Times

The UCLA Voting Rights project released a white paper this week, “Protecting Democracy:  Implementing Equal and Safe Access to the Ballot Box During a Global Pandemic,” with recommendations for voting officials to begin planning now for the implementation of a vote-by-mail program for upcoming primary elections and, most importantly, the November General Election.

This timely policy paper is an early call to action for the ongoing concern that the novel coronavirus will affect turnout in upcoming elections given the large and persistent public health campaign encouraging the public to practice “social distancing.” The paper urges Congress to immediately provide funding and guidance for a national vote-by-mail effort as part of current relief proposals to help with the economic impacts of the coronavirus. If Congress fails to act, the paper calls on state and local officials to step in. The paper also seeks to highlight the low-health risks and general safety to the public that voting by mail provides during this national emergency.

“States around the country are pushing back primary and runoff elections in the hope that election procedures can return to normal at a later time,” said Chad Dunn, co-founder of the UCLA Voting Rights Project and co-author of the report. “But hope is not a plan. We must prepare now to protect the fundamental right to vote.”

The UCLA Voting Rights Project is an applied research and direct service program of the Latino Politics & Policy Initiative, a partnership of the Division of Social Sciences and the Luskin School of Public Affairs. The UCLA VRP is focused on voting rights litigation, research, policy and training. The report is the first comprehensive review of vote by mail laws in the age of a pandemic, and it includes best practices on how to implement the measures most effectively and quickly. The report was made available to Congressional offices as coronavirus relief discussions are underway.

The white paper offers the following solutions to implement a universal vote-by-mail program by November:

  • Enroll voters immediately in a vote-by-mail program, allowing for an online registration option.
  • Provide a universal mail ballot and envelope to standardize the process and education efforts.
  • Work with the U.S. Postal Service to design a reliable and convenient program to return mail-in ballots.
  • Create security measures for vote-by-mail ballots.
  • Create a process for voters to address any issues with their vote-by-mail ballots so as to ensure all lawful votes are counted.
  • Modify any in-person polling places to maintain social distancing and minimize public health concerns for at-risk populations.
  • Improve sanitation efforts at polling places to provide public health assurances for in-person voting.
  • Increase voter education efforts on reforms implemented.

“The 2020 election could have record turnout for young voters and communities of color, groups that must be engaged in deciding the future of our country and on issues that affect our local communities,” said Matt Barreto, UCLA Voting Rights co-founder and co-author of the paper. “Voting is the foundation of our democracy, and vote-by-mail offers a solution to challenges that range from busy work schedules to global pandemics.”

 

DOWNLOAD the full report HERE.

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UCLA Sociology Professors Advocate for “Physical” Rather Than “Social” Distancing

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Illo: iStock

March 21, 2020

In an opinion piece that was published today on CNN.com, UCLA sociology professors, Dr. Cecilia Menjívar, Dr. Jacob G. Foster, and Dr. Jennie E. Brand, recommend using the more accurate term “physical distancing” rather than the misleading term “social distancing” during the COVID-19 pandemic. They write: “In fact, when we practice physical distancing, we need social connectivity and social responsibility more than ever.” To read this informative piece titled, “Don’t Call It ‘Social Distancing,'” click HERE.

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