The Socially Embedded Lab reimagines Social in the Digital Age.

Mission

The Socially Embedded Lab at Ben-Gurion University studies social behavior in large-scale, online information systems. The lab investigates areas where information systems are suboptimal for people -- for example, by not meeting people's needs, goals or expectations -- and proposes new computational measures to bridge the gaps. For example, it studies the scale and scope of fake news on social media and develops methods for limiting its spread, audits large-scale algorithmic systems such as Google Search and Gmail to reduce bias and inequality, and examines online user engagement with news in order to promote better measures for quantifying it. The lab is part of the Software and Information Systems Engineering (SISE) department at BGU.

News

  • Sep. 2023

    Arnon Strum (BGU) and Nir Grinberg are awarded a 2-year grant from Israel's Innovation Authority to develop NLP resources and models for the Israeli Criminal Justice System.

  • July 2023

    Nir Grinberg wins one of two Best Parallel Talks at the 9th International Conference on Computational Social Science.

  • Apr. 2023

    Nir Grinberg receives BGU's Teaching Innovation Award for 2021-2022.

  • Dec. 2022

    Talia Meital Schwartz (BGU) and Nir Grinberg are awarded a 3-year grant from Israel's Ministry of Science and Technology to study out-of-home placements of at-risk children in the Israeli social welfare system.

  • Nov. 2022

    Jennifer Oser (BGU) wins an ERC Starting Grant with a Work Package co-led by Nir Grinberg.

People

Nir's profile picture
Nir Grinberg

Assistant Professor

Assaf Shamir profile picture
Sahar Baribi

M.Sc. student

Assaf Shamir profile picture
Assaf Shamir

M.Sc. student

Assaf Shamir profile picture
Moran Shay

M.Sc. student

Assaf Shamir profile picture
Eitan Torf

M.Sc. student

Assaf Shamir profile picture
Hagit Liven Bar

M.Sc. student

Assaf Shamir profile picture
Boris Sobol

M.Sc. student

Assaf Shamir profile picture
Miri Yitshaki

M.Sc. student

Assaf Shamir profile picture
Zahi Mizrahi

M.Sc. student

Assaf Shamir profile picture
Ori Peri

M.Sc. student

Din Ezra profile picture
Din Ezra

M.Sc. student

Projects

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Fake news on social media
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Bias in AI-mediated communication
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Predicting unemployment using social media
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Exposure to politics on social media and its impact on political behavior and attitude
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Searching for science all over the world
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Engagement with news

Publications

Leveraging Exposure Networks for Detecting Fake News Sources, Maor Reuben, Lisa Friedland, Rami Puzis, and Nir Grinberg. KDD 2024.
pdf

Supersharers of Fake News on Twitter, Sahar Baribi-Bartov, Briony Swire-Thompson, and Nir Grinberg. Science, Vol 384, Issue 6699, pp. 979-982, 2024.
pdf | supplementary | data | code

280 Characters to Employment: Using Twitter to Quantify Job Vacancies, Boris Sobol, Manuel Tonneau, Samuel Fraiberger, Do Lee, and Nir Grinberg. ICWSM 2024.
pdf | data | code

EnronSR: A Benchmark for Evaluating AI-Generated Email Replies, Moran Shay, Roei Davidson, and Nir Grinberg. ICWSM 2024.
pdf | code

Investigating the increase of violent speech in Incel communities with human-guided GPT-4 prompt iteration, Daniel Matter, Miriam Schirmer, Nir Grinberg, and Jürgen Pfeffer. Frontiers in Social Psychology, Computational Social Psychology section, Vol 2, 2024.
pdf

Who is Curating My Political Feed? Characterizing Political Exposure of Registered U.S. Voters on Twitter, Assaf Shamir, Jennnifer Oser, and Nir Grinberg. To appear in The International Journal of Press/Politics, 2023.
pdf | supplementary | data | code

“Is COVID-19 a hoax?”: auditing the quality of COVID-19 conspiracy-related information and misinformation in Google search results in four languages, Shakked Dabran-Zivan, Baram-Tsabari, Roni Shapira, Miri Yitshaki, Daria Dvorzhitskaia, and Nir Grinberg. Internet Research, 2023.
pdf

Multilingual Detection of Personal Employment Status on Twitter, Manuel Tonneau, Dhaval Adjodah, João Palotti, Nir Grinberg, and Samuel Fraiberger. ACL 2022.
pdf | code

Pandemics, Protests, and Publics: Demographic Activity and Engagement on Twitter in 2020, Sarah Shugars, Adina Gitomer, Stefan McCabe, Ryan J. Gallagher, Kenneth Joseph, Nir Grinberg, Larissa Doroshenko, Brooke Foucault Welles, and David Lazer. Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media 1, 2021.
pdf | code

The COVID States Project #18: Fake News on Twitter, David Lazer, Damian J. Ruck, Alexi Quintana, Sarah Shugars, Kenneth Joseph, Nir Grinberg, Ryan J. Gallagher, Luke Horgan, Adina Gitomer, Aleszu Bajak, Matthew A. Baum, Katherine Ognyanova, Hong Qu, William R. Hobbs, Stefan McCabe, and Jon Green. OSF Preprints 2021.
pdf | demo

New Frontiers for Fake News Research on Social Media in 2021 and Beyond, Nir Grinberg. MISINFO workshop at the Web Conference 2021.
pdf | workshop

Tackling misinformation: What researchers could do with social media data, Irene Pasquetto, Briony Swire-Thompson, Michelle A. Amazeen, Fabrício Benevenuto, Nadia M. Brashier, Robert M. Bond, Nir Grinberg et al. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review 1, no. 8, 2020.
pdf

Fake News on Twitter During the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, Nir Grinberg, Kenneth Joseph, Lisa Friedland, Briony Swire-Thompson, and David Lazer. Science, Vol 363, Issue 6425, pp. 374-378, 2019.
pdf | supplementary | data | code

Identifying Modes of User Engagement with Online News and Their Relationship to Information Gain in Text, Nir Grinberg. The Web Conference (WWW) 2018.
pdf | code

Reports of the workshops held at the 2016 International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, Jisun An, Ciampaglia, Giovanni Luca, Nir Grinberg, Kenneth Joseph, Alexios Mantzarlis, Gregory Maus, Filippo Menczer, Nicholas Proferes, and Brooke Foucault Welles. AI Magazine 38, no. 4, pp 93-98, 2017.
pdf

Combating fake news: An agenda for research and action, David Lazer, Matt Baum, Nir Grinberg, Lisa Friedland, Kenneth Joseph, Will Hobbs, and Carolina Mattsson. Harvard Kennedy School, Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy 2, 2017.
pdf

Understanding Feedback Expectations on Facebook, Nir Grinberg, Shankar Kalyanaraman, Lada A. Adamic, and Mor Naaman. CSCW 2017.
pdf

Changes in Engagement Before and After Posting to Facebook, Nir Grinberg, P. Alex Dow, Lada A. Adamic, and Mor Naaman. CHI 2016. Honorable Mention
pdf

Extracting Diurnal Patterns of Real World Activity from Social Media, Nir Grinberg, Mor Naaman, Blake Shaw, and Gilad Lotan. ICWSM 2013.
pdf | slides

Robust Detection of Hyper-local Events from Geotagged Social Media Data, Ke Xie, Chaolun Xia, Nir Grinberg, Raz Schwartz, and Mor Naaman. MDMKDD 2013.
pdf

Contact

Still haven't found what you're looking for? Feel free to get in touch with any lab member for further questions and suggestions.

Looking to join the lab? Please contact Nir AFTER you've read some of our papers. Don't forget to attach your CV and transcripts, and make sure to specify at least one research direction that excites you and any special skills that set you apart.