An increasing number of people across the United States are opting to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Still, polls suggest that roughly one-quarter to one-third of the American public remains hesitant to get the vaccine, a serious concern when it comes to reaching herd immunity.
A new project from Indiana University's Observatory on Social Media, or OSoMe, which is an IUNI partner-project, points to misinformation as a factor affecting COVID-19 vaccine adoption.
IUNI Advisory Council Members Brea Perry and Bernice Pescosolido were awarded a Russell Sage Foundation research grant for their study of social network dynamics and consequences during the COVID-19 Pandemic. More specifically, the research project will examine the role of personal community networks in mitigating the adverse consequences of the pandemic.
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, has named 95 members ACM Fellows for wide-ranging and fundamental contributions in areas including artificial intelligence, cloud computing, computer graphics, computational biology, data science, human-computer interaction, software engineering, theoretical computer science, and virtual reality, among other areas. The accomplishments of the 2020 ACM Fellows have driven innovations that ushered in significant improvements across many areas of technology, indus.try, and personal life.
IUNI Advisory Council Member Filippo Menczer was selected as a fellow for his research on the vulnerability of social media networks to disinformation and manipulation.
An interdisciplinary team led by Indiana University social neuroscientist Anne Krendl and IUNI Advisory Council Member Brea Perry was awarded $3.5 million by the National Institutes of Health to navigate a phenomenon with major promise for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease: that the social connectedness of older adults predicts their vulnerability to Alzheimer's and general cognitive decline.
