Reality mining: sensing complex social systems
Personal and Ubiquitous Computing
Social sensing for epidemiological behavior change
Proceedings of the 12th ACM international conference on Ubiquitous computing
The social fMRI: measuring, understanding, and designing social mechanisms in the real world
Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Ubiquitous computing
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A key challenge of data-driven social science is the gathering of high quality multi-dimensional datasets. A second challenge relates to design and execution of structured experimental interventions in-situ, in a way comparable to the reliability and intentionality of ex-situ laboratory experiments. This work introduces the "Social fMRI" --- a ubiquitous computing approach that enhances existing methodologies by combining extremely rich data collection in terms of signals, dimensionality, and throughput, together with the ability to conduct targeted experimental interventions with study populations. The proposed research aims to demonstrate the value of the Social fMRI approach via its first instantiation: The Friends and Family living laboratory study, in which a young-family residential community was transformed into a living laboratory for over a year. Using the highly fine-grained and unprecedented longitudinal dataset collected in the study, I aim to show how this approach allows us to gain insights on intricate social mechanisms and interpersonal relationships within the community in ways not possible with traditional approaches. In addition, the mobile-phone based sensing and intervention delivery system developed for this study --- a Social fMRI reference implementation --- is field-proven and robust enough to be reused by other researchers and developers as an open and extensible sensing platform.