Sorin Matei
Please join me in congratulating Sorin Adam Matei, Professor of communication, whose book, co-edited with Jeff Collmann (Georgetown) Ethical Reasoning in Big Data: An Exploratory Analysis was published in April.
Ethical Reasoning in Big Data: An Exploratory Analysis identifies the main types of ethical dilemmas that emerge when handling big data and proposes a set of principles for developing sound ethical handling of big data. The volume also considers methods for ethical reasoning in big data contents and introduces methods for teaching ethical reasoning to big data researchers. The chapters of the volume are contributed by leading experts in genomics, neuroscience, health education, communication, public opinion research, and crowdsourcing.
The book is partially the product of Kredible.Net, one of Sorin’s latest projects funded by the NSF. The main source of support was a second NSF grant, which funded a special workshop at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. The Kredible.Net project published two other books (Roles, trust, and authority in social media and Transparency in social media) which bring together scholars that have an interest in reputation and authority on social media. The project also supports a “big data” mining project, that aims to determine how egalitarian is content production on Wikipedia. Details about the project can be found on Kredible.net.
Sorin’s work represents a collaboration with colleagues from a variety of campus units, including Computer Science, Engineering, and other social scientific disciplines. His teaching uses a number of software platforms that he has codeveloped, such as Visible Effort or Visible Past. His work was published in the Journal of Communication, Communication Research, Information Society, and Foreign Policy. Sorin is also known for his media work. He is a former BBC World Service journalist whose contributions have been published in Esquire and several leading Romanian newspapers. In Romania, he is known for his books: Boierii Mintii (The Mind Boyars), Idolii forului (Idols of the Forum) and Idei de schimb (Spare Ideas).
Congratulations, Dr. Matei!
David A. Reingold
Justin S. Morrill Dean
College of Liberal Arts