2016 - 2017: Analysis of Twitter usage at Louisville WFO before and after shift to dedicated IDSS desk
- Working in collaboration with Ron Steve, Kevin Deitsch, and Ted Funk (NWS Louisville) as part of my NOAA Hollings Scholarship
- Project goal: Analysis of Twitter data over a two-year period to assess which posts by the office were well-received by users and which weren't, as well as understanding the impact of an office-wide shift to a dedicated Decision Support Services desk on tweet frequency and engagement
- Skills obtained/developed:
- Working with Twitter data and learning terms associated with social media analytics
- Analysis in Microsoft Excel
- Quantitative content coding of Twitter content
- Presenting research, through spoken PowerPoint presentations and poster sessions
- Key research activities:
- Used an existing set of 5,000 tweets collected over two years as a basis for analysis
- Coded tweets based on a number of self-developed content codes (e.g. storm report, nowcast)
- Grouped tweets based on coded and metadata characteristics, such as content type and presence/absence of multimedia attachments and links, and compared rates of engagement for each group
- Identified key weather events over the data time period and characterized them as "short-fuse" or "long-fuse" events and looked at the evolution of Twitter content and engagement for the aggregate short-fuse and long-fuse event
- Prepared an oral presentation that was presented at the NOAA Hollings Symposium, and presented a poster at the 2016 National Weather Association meeting and the 2017 AMS Annual Meeting
2015: Analysis of Houston resident survey conducted following Hurricane Ike
- Working in collaboration with John Nielsen-Gammon (Texas A&M University) and Eric Berger (The Houston Chronicle) as part of the summer 2015 Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program at Texas A&M University
- Project goal: To understand what information sources were used and trusted by Houston residents impacted by Hurricane Ike in 2008
- Skills obtained/developed:
- My first taste of research, and my first introduction to the various research skills I've honed over the years
- Working with an advisor to define key research questions
- Searching for relevant literature using multiple searches on EBSCO Host and Google Scholar
- Working with survey data
- Using Microsoft Excel for data analysis and visualization
- Creating and presenting a research poster
- Key research activities:
- Built an extensive literature library on aspects of risk communication and information sources
- Aggregated trust ratings by various information sources (e.g. NWS/NHC, newspapers)
- Aggregated trust ratings by whether the survey participants used the source, or whether they planned to in the future
- Aggregated information source use by whether the survey participant evacuated or not, and whether they regretted their decision or not
- Looked at other factors, such as difficulty in evacuation, damage to neighborhood, or regret in evacuation decision, to assess their impact on information source trust broadly
- Summarized research with a poster presentation, presented to REU cohort and advisors, at the 2016 American Meteorological Society annual meeting, and at the 2015 Penn State Earth and Mineral Sciences Undergraduate Poster Exhibition, for which it was awarded 2nd place