13. Finding (Mis)alignments in Public Opinion and Wisdom in Collaboration Management with Kenneth Joseph and Sarah Shugars

Our guests on this episode are Kenneth Joseph, an assistant professor in Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Buffalo, and Sarah Shugars, a Faculty Fellow at New York University’s Center for Data Science. We discuss the process behind their EMNLP 2021 paper, “(Mis)alignment Between Stance Expressed in Social Media Data and Public Opinion Surveys,” co-authored with Ryan Gallagher, Jon Green, Alexi Quintana Mathé, Zijian An, and David Lazer. Kenneth and Sarah offer tips around communication, collaboration, and project management, especially for papers written during a pandemic. Kenneth talks about “privileging ethics” when making decisions around data privacy and experimental replicability, and Sarah reflects on navigating differences in terminology use in interdisciplinary environments.