
Josh joined the Syracuse iSchool as an Assistant Professor in 2019. Prior to that he was an Assistant Professor of Media and Information at Michigan State University. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Brandeis University in 2008. During his graduate work, he was also a Senior Scientist at Charles River Analytics where he designed and built decision support technology for numerous DoD customers, including the Army and DARPA. Following his degree, he was a post-doctoral fellow and research scientist at the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence. While at MIT, he was chief architect for the MIT Climate Colab.
You can find more about his past research work on his google scholar profile. Josh runs the C4 Lab, where you can find an updated list of his most recent projects. He is always interested in working with motivated students and is easy to reach via email.
Research
Josh studies collective intelligence in socio-technical systems. He draws on his training in cognitive science, human computer interaction, and computer-mediated group decision making to investigate how to design sustainable systems that benefit those who use them as well as society more broadly. He also draws heavily on complex systems theory to understand patterns of stability and change in socio-technical systems and focuses on both social dynamics and knowledge production in online communities. Much of his current work considers how social technology can influence the formation of peoples’ beliefs, and in particular beliefs that are motivated by misinformation.
To pursue his research program, Josh draws on a wide variety of methods. Many of these are computational, including text mining, social network analysis, agent-based modeling, and machine learning. He also uses his programming background to build and deploy systems that can be used for experiments and design studies. To inform these more technical methods, Josh also often turns to qualitative studies, participatory design, and content analysis.
Selected Publications
Introne, J., Korsunska, A., Krsova, L., & Zhang, Z. (2020). Mapping the Narrative Ecosystem of Conspiracy Theories in Online Anti-vaccination Discussions. International Conference on Social Media and Society, 184–192. https://doi.org/10.1145/3400806.3400828
Aminpour, P., Gray, S. A., Jetter, A. J., Introne, J. E., Singer, A., & Arlinghaus, R. (2020). Wisdom of stakeholder crowds in complex social–ecological systems. Nature Sustainability, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0467-z
Introne, J., Erickson, I., Semaan, B., & Goggins, S. (2019). Designing sustainable online support: Examining the effects of design change in 49 online health support communities. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24250
Introne, J., & Goggins, S. (2019). Advice reification, learning, and emergent collective intelligence in online health support communities. Computers in Human Behavior, 99, 205–218. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.05.028
Introne, J., Gokce Yildirim, I., Iandoli, L., DeCook, J., & Elzeini, S. (2018). How People Weave Online Information Into Pseudoknowledge. Social Media + Society, 4(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305118785639
Funding
PI: Josh Introne, NSF-CHS (#1908407): Online Dynamics of Misinformation, 8/1/2019 – 7/31/2022
PI: Josh Introne, Unrestricted Gift from Lifia Corporation, 2020, 2021