Paul Resnick

[PHOTO]
Professor
University of Michigan
School of Information
314 West Hall/ 3246C SI North
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1092
presnick@umich.edu

Research Projects |
Courses |
Interests and Activities:   professional | personal
Papers |
Bio
Blog
 

Office hours Winter 2009:  Thursdays 11-12, 417B West Hall.

   Research Interests and Projects

 

BALANCE: Enhancing Diversity in News and Opinion Aggregators

Aggregators such as Digg, Reddit, and Google News rely on ratings and links to select and present subsets of the large quantity of news and opinion items generated each day. If a majority of the raters or linkers share a political viewpoint, minority viewpoints may get little representation in the results, creating an echo chamber for the majority. The goals of this research are to: 1) form alternative measures of diversity for result sets; 2) develop algorithms for selecting result sets that jointly optimize for diversity and popularity; 3) assess the impacts of alternative selection and presentation methods on people’s willingness to use an aggregation service, their exposure to diverse opinions, and the size of their argument repertoires. The results of the project will provide a better understanding of alternative notions of what it means for a set of items to be diverse or balanced, and the range of reactions that different people have to varying levels and presentations of diversity.

Manipulation-Resistant Recommender Systems

Online recommender systems are widely deployed as tools to guide users towards items they will like. There is a growing concern that recommender systems may be manipulated by people with a vested interest in having certain items recommended (or not recommended). This is exacerbated as it is often easy for a manipulator to create multiple online accounts to execute an attack. The goal of this project is to develop general techniques for the design of manipulation-resistant recommender systems as well as specific solutions for applications in which such a recommender could have a significant impact. (Joint work with Rahul Sami. Funded by NSF under Grant No. IIS-0812042.

CommunityLab: Motivating Contribution the the Public Good in On-line Communities

We are drawing on theories and data from social psychology and public goods economics to drive design decisions about on-line communities with the goal of increasing participants' contributions to the communal good. (Joint work with Bob Kraut, Sara Kiesler, Yan Chen, Loren Terveen, John Riedl, and Joe Konstan. Funded by NSF under Grant No. 0325837.) 

Courses

Winter 2008:

SI684/884: e-communities

SI631: Content Management Systems (PEP Workshop project course)

Fall 2006:

SI502 Networked Computing: Storage, Communication, and Processing (Ctools site only; no public site)

Winter 2007:

SI505: Drupal Boot Camp

SI631: Content Management Systems (PEP Workshop project course)

Fall 2006:

Recommender Systems

SI575: Community Information Corps Seminar

Winter 2006:

SI684/884: e-communities

Fall 2005:

SI540: Understanding Networked Computing  (2005 placeout information)

SI544: Statistics

Winter 2005:

SI575: Community Information Corps Seminar

SI684/884: e-communities

Fall 2004:

SI540: Understanding Networked Computing

SI644: Statistics

Fall 2003:

CMU CSCW/Online Communities course (co-taught with Bob Kraut)

Winter 2003:

SI684/884: e-communities

Fall 2002:

SI540: Understanding Networked Computing (no longer available on-line)

Winter 2002:

SI598/698: Dot.Org Incubator (Practical Engagement Workshop)

SI575: Community Information Corps Seminar

SI684: e-communities

 

Fall 2001:

SI598/698: Dot.Org Incubator (Practical Engagement Workshop)
SI540: Understanding Networked Computing (no longer available on-line)

SI575: Community Information Corps Seminar

 

Winter 2001:

SI575: Community Information Corps Seminar

Fall 2000:

SI540: Understanding Networked Computing (no longer available on-line)

SI575: Community Information Corps Seminar

Professional Interests and Activities

In 1999, I started the Community Information Corps at the University of Michigan School of Information. It brings together faculty and students who are studying how to organize information flows for community and public purposes. With support from the Packard Foundation, the Alliance for Community Technology and the Microsoft Foundation, we have offered financial assistance and professional development opportunities to alumni who pursue public interest careers. Salary supplements are also available for public interest summer internships.

Personal Interests and Activities

Music

I play the fiddle and guitar, and sing, mostly country and folk styles.

Sports

Tennis (USTA 4.0). Ultimate frisbee.

Papers

  • Zhou, Daniel Xiaodan, Oostendorp, Nathan, Hess, Michael, and Resnick, Paul. Conversation Pivots and Double Pivots. Proceedings of CHI08 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Florence, Italy, pp. 1009-1012.

PICS Technical Specification Documents

Evans, Christopher, Feather, Clive  D. W., Hopmann, Alex, Presler-Marshall, Martin and Resnick, Paul, PICSRules 1.1 W3C, Dec. 1997.

Miller, Jim, Paul Resnick and David Singer (1996). “Rating Services and Rating Systems (and Their Machine-Readable Descriptions),” The World Wide Web Journal 1(4): 23-43. Available on-line at http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/PICS/services.html

Krauskopf, Tim, Jim Miller, Paul Resnick and Win Treese (1996) “Label Syntax and Communication Protocols,” The World Wide Web Journal 1(4): 45-69. Available on-line at http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/PICS/labels.html
 

  Bio

Paul Resnick is a Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information. He previously worked as a researcher at AT&T Labs and AT&T Bell Labs, and as an Assistant Professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He received the master's and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT, and a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Michigan.

Professor Resnick's research focuses on SocioTechnical Capital, productive social relations that are enabled by the ongoing use of information and communication technology. His current projects include analyzing and designing reputation systems, ride share coordination services, and applying principles from economics and social psychology to the design of on-line communities.

Resnick was a pioneer in the field of recommender systems (sometimes called collaborative filtering or social filtering). Recommender systems guide people to interesting materials based on recommendations from other people.  His articles have appeared in Scientific American, Wired, Communications of the ACM, The American Economic Review, Management Science, and many other publications. 

 

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