Integrated Foundations for Privacy-Protected Public Opinion Research

FALL 2019 RESEARCH INCUBATION AWARDEES

PI: Mayank Varia, Research Associate Professor of Computer Science, CAS
Co-PIs: Dino Christenson, Associate Professor of Political Science, CAS, and Mark Crovella, Professor of Computer Sciences, CAS
Track: HIC & Red Hat Collaboratory

Understanding public opinion dynamics is important but difficult because the polls are widely used with significant drawbacks. The team proposes to design, develop and deploy a novel architecture that passively observes the web browsing activity of a user panel, and interprets that activity through the aid of novel machine learning algorithms. The platform would allow social scientists to ask detailed questions and receive responses rapidly, enable policymakers to understand and react to the will of the public and better understand important social problems.