I am a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Computational Social Science at the University of Edinburgh School of Informatics, in the Institute for Language, Cognition and Computation. In my research, I primarily use computational methods from natural language processing, social network analysis and agent-based modelling to study social media and related technologies. A key focus of my research is to explore different aspects of social media, such as misinformation, hate speech, and the malicious use of automation (bots), as well as how social media can be used effectively for social good, such as in crisis communication. I also examine issues with these methods including data collection practices, fairness, bias and ethics.
At Edinburgh, I am the Director of the SMASH group and part of the management team of the CDT in NLP. Before working here, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Duisburg-Essen, where I also completed my PhD. I am a member of AIS, ACL and ACM and an Associate Editor of Business & Information Systems Engineering.
- Computational social science
- Social computing
- Information systems
- Social media analytics and communication
- Social network analysis, agent-based modelling and simulation, natural language processing and text classification for social media
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PhD, 2019
University of Duisburg-Essen
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MSc in Computer Science, 2016
University of Münster
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Exchange year, 2014-5
University of Strasbourg
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BSc in Information Systems, 2013
University of Münster
Selected articles
Calabrese, Agostina; Neves, Leonardo; Shah, Neil; Bos, Maarten W.; Ross, Björn; Lapata, Mirella; Barbieri, Francesco (2024). Explainability and Hate Speech: Structured Explanations Make Social Media Moderators Faster. Accepted for ACL 2024 (forthcoming).
Ungless, Eddie L; Ross, Björn; Belle, Vaishak (2023). Potential Pitfalls With Automatic Sentiment Analysis: The Example of Queerphobic Bias. Social Science Computer Review 41 (6), pp. 2211–2229. [doi]
Winter, Stephan; Neubaum, German; Stieglitz, Stefan; Ross, Björn (2021). #OpinionLeaders: A comparison of self-reported and observable influence of Twitter users. Information, Communication & Society (ICS) 24(11), pp. 1533–1550.
Jung, Anna-Katharina; Ross, Björn; Stieglitz, Stefan (2020). Caution: Rumors ahead – The debunking of false information on social media. Big Data & Society 7(2).
Ross, Björn; Pilz, Laura; Cabrera, Benjamin; Brachten, Florian; Neubaum, German; Stieglitz, Stefan (2019). Are social bots a real threat? An agent-based model of the spiral of silence to analyse the impact of manipulative actors in social networks. European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS), 28(4), pp. 394–412.
Supervision
PhD
Current PhD students
- Agostina Calabrese
- Eddie Ungless
- Sandrine Chausson
- Wendy Zheng
- Seraphina Goldfarb-Tarrant (first supervisor: Adam Lopez)
- Mahmoud Ibrahim (first supervisor: Walid Magdy)
Prospective PhD students
For information on pursuing a PhD at the University of Edinburgh, please feel free to contact me directly by email and send some information about your research interests and your CV.
For PhD funding, the application deadline for starting your PhD in October of any given year tend to be in November to January of the previous year, so the earlier you contact potential supervisors, the better.
MSc and UG students
I am open to supervising self-proposed dissertation projects. If you are currently an Edinburgh student on one of our programmes and you would like to self-propose a project, please get in touch with me a few weeks before the deadline.
Teaching
In the academic year 2022-23, I am teaching Text Technologies for Data Science (with Walid Magdy) at the University of Edinburgh School of Informatics, and Evidence, Argument and Persuasion in a Digital Age at the Edinburgh Futures Institute.
All course materials and recordings of live lectures for TTDS can be found on the course web page.
Contact
- b.ross@ed.ac.uk
- Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, Scotland EH8 9AB