University at Buffalo School of Management

Curbing social media harassment and abuse A new system for au- tomatically detecting prej- udice in social media posts can help curb abuse and ha- rassment online, according to new research from the School of Management. Published in Decision Support Systems, the study analyzed on- line intergroup prejudice—a distorted opinion held by one social group about another without examining the facts be- hind aversion, hatred and hostility. "In social media, users oen ex- press prejudice without thinking about how members of the other group would perceive their comments," says study co-author Haimonti Dutta, assistant pro- fessor of management science and sys- tems. "This not only alienates the targeted group members but also encourages the development of dissent and negative be- havior toward that group." Using Twitter data of more than 68,000 tweets from nearly 31,000 users collected immediately following the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, the researchers developed a system for auto- matically detecting intergroup prejudice in social media messages using machine learning. The system can flag messages as having the potential to spread misinfor- mation and ill will, assisting crisis infor- mation systems managers. Dutta says manual detection of prej- udiced social media messages is daunting due to the sheer volume, and systems like theirs can assist with an increasingly im- portant task. "The prejudice expressed public- ly via social media is dangerous because those messages are likely to spread far more rapidly and broadly than private sharing," says Dutta. Dutta collaborated on the study with K. Hazel Kwon, assistant profes- sor in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, and H. Raghav Rao, the AT&T Distinguished Chair in Infrastructure Assurance and Security at the University of Texas at San Antonio College of Business.x 22 Buffalo Business Spring 2019 Insights Double jeopardy: The high costs of living in Nairobi's slums Tenants in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya, receive dras- tically inferior household services and pay more rent compared to those in its for- mal settlements, according to new School of Management research. Published in World Development, the study found the households in Nairobi's slum areas face significant gaps in public services. In the case of basic services like water, toilet and public sewage disposal, the gaps are as high as 40 to 50 percent. In addition, these residents pay about 16 per- cent more than their formal area counter- parts, when adjusted for housing quality conditions. "Around a billion people worldwide currently reside in urban slums under de- plorable conditions," says study author Debabrata Talukdar, professor of market- ing. "People living in Kenyan slums face depraved living conditions and a rental housing market that is highly exploitative of its tenants." Talukdar analyzed nearly 1,200 re- sponses from households in the slums and formal areas of Nairobi to conduct a sys- tematic empirical analysis of the market conditions faced by residents in both areas. He says the double jeopardy situation could be solved with significant public fi- nancing to increase the amount of housing and improve infrastructure, but that solu- tion is impractical based on the current capabilities of a developing country like Kenya. "The more pragmatic approach relies on combined public and private invest- ments for policy initiatives that would be beneficial to both parties," says Talukdar. "Specific initiatives could include formaliz- ing tenancy rights, slum upgrading or rede- velopment, or regulatory liberalizations in the housing sector."x Dutta Talukdar

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