9. Reddit Debates and Interdisciplinary Multilingualism with Emaad Manzoor

Diaries of Social Data Research

Our guest on this episode is Emaad Manzoor, an Assistant Professor of Operations and Information Management at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Along with George H. Chen, Dokyun Lee, and Michael D. Smith, he wrote "Influence via Ethos: On the Persuasive Power of Reputation in Deliberation Online" which is currently under review at Management Science.
Emaad illuminates this project's long journey, from manually-labeling argumentation schemas, to using observational data from Reddit, to designing experiments. He talks with us about how Economics and NLP can learn from one another and the importance of "interdisciplinary multilingualism" in highlighting different aspects of one's work to different audiences. We also chat about the importance of personal drive in research projects and strategies for developing resilience to "emotional punches."