Social Media Virality: Predicting Social Media Cascades over Arbitrary Time Horizons

In this work, we consider the problem of "information cascades" - i.e., the virality of social network content on social media - and the specific problem of predicting future cascade size over arbitrary time horizons, given information about the content's initial popularity growth. These predictions are useful for a number of applications, including early detection of potentially harmful viral content in online social networks. With application to a large collection of content on Facebook over a two-month period, we predict cascades size using an approach based on Hawkes point process models.

Oxford Minds Panel Discussion - Power: what does it mean for states, markets, and society?

The series

This term’s series explores social science’s big concepts. It examines the contested meaning and diverse application of some of the theoretical ideas that unify and challenge social scientists. It brings together the bright minds of Oxford, and high profile external speakers, to consider the range of ways in which we can think about ‘power’, ‘space’, ‘identity’, and ‘belonging’.

Power: what does it mean for states, markets, and society?

Thanks for your Service: The Causes and Consequences of Public Confidence in the U.S. Military

Why is the confidence of the American public in its military so high? What does it matter for policymaking and politics? Most of what we already know about this topic comes either from standard surveys designed with other purposes in mind or from older studies conducted in the pre-9/11 era. Along with my co-author, Jim Golby (UT-Austin) I have collected new data from two large surveys of the American public using instruments designed to probe the determinants and consequents of public confidence in the military.

Oxford Spring School in Advanced Research Methods

The Oxford Spring School offers graduate students and researchers from universities across the UK and abroad a unique venue to learn cutting-edge methods in Social Science.

The programme consists of a variety of advanced courses, which place different data analysis techniques within broader disciplinary trends towards mixed-methods research designs. Working with our world leading teachers and researchers in quantitative and qualitative methods, you will have the opportunity to choose the course option which suits you best.

Book Review: The long history of forecasting capitalism’s demise

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Foretelling the End of Capitalism moves briskly across a century and a half of intellectual history, from Marx and John Stuart Mill in the mid-19th century (when the term “capitalism” entered the lexicon) to the aftermath of the 2008 crash. The intervening cast of thinkers is large, if almost entirely European and American: Max Weber and Rosa Luxemburg in the beginning of the 20th century, John Maynard Keynes and Joseph Schumpeter in the middle, Daniel Bell and Francis Fukuyama more recently, along with dozens of others.

Protecting China’s Interests Overseas: Securitization and Foreign Policy

The securitization of non-traditional security issues is a scarcely discussed and, yet, extremely powerful force that shapes the evolution of Chinese foreign and security policy. The lecture will show how this tortuous process deeply shaped China’s approach to the protection of the life and assets of Chinese nationals overseas, an aspect of Chinese foreign policy that is already, and will become increasingly important over time.
Subscribe to

QS WORLD RANKINGS FOR POLITICS & INT’L STUDIES: 2

BEST UK UNIVERSITIES FOR POLITICS – THE GUARDIAN: 1

THE WORLD UNIVERSITY RANKINGS FOR POLITICS AND INT’L STUDIES: 1 IN THE UK