Ágnes Horvát


RESEARCH LAB       CV
a-horvat (at) northwestern (dot) edu

I am an Assistant Professor in Communication and Computer Science (by courtesy) at Northwestern University, where I direct the Technology and Social Behavior PhD program. My research lies at the intersection of computational social science, social computing, and communication. Using interdisciplinary approaches from network and data science, my research group, the Lab on Innovation, Networks, and Knowledge (LINK), investigates how networks induce biased information production, sharing, and processing on digital platforms. For example, we study the impact of networks and diversity on scholarly communication, identify expressions of collective intelligence and opportunities for innovation in crowdsourcing communities, and develop tools to support creativity and predict success in culture industries. I developed courses on network science and machine learing to train students for careers at the intersection of creative occupations and data science. My research and teaching have been recognized with an NSF CAREER and CRII Award. I received my PhD in Physics from the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Prior to becoming a faculty member at Northwestern, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO).

NEWS

♦ Call for Papers: JCMC special issue on Gender Gaps in Digital Spaces, co-edited with Sandra González-Bailón.
♦ Call for Papers: 15th ACM Web Science Conference 2023, co-chaired with Dame Wendy Hall and Noshir Contractor.
♦ Invited talks this fall at the University of Michigan, UIUC, IAS, CUDAN, and the MIT Media Lab.
Call for Application: Postdoctoral Fellow in Computational Social Science, Network Science, Science of Science, or Social Computing.
♦ Invited talk at the International School and Conference on Network Science NetSci.
♦ New paper accepted to ICWSM 2023 with Sohyeon Hwang and Daniel Romero on information loss in the multiplatform sharing of science.
♦ New paper in PNAS with Hao Peng and Daniel Romero on the multiplatform diffusion of retracted research.
♦ New preprints on arXiv about the gender gap in scholarly self-promotion on social media, experiments with hidden influences of funder behavior in crowdfunding, novelty and cultural change in modern popular music, and user engagement with retracted articles on Twitter.
♦ Julia Barnett and Henry Dambanemuya receive best student paper awards at the International Conference on the Science of Science and Innovation (ICSSI) and the annual meeting of the International Communication Association (ICA), respectively. Stay tuned for our award-winning research on Intersectional inequalities in the impact of online visibility on citations and A network-based approach to understanding signalling and irrational herding online. Congratulations, Julia and Henry!
♦ News & Views piece in Nature with Brian Uzzi on how creativity is impacted by virtual vs in-person communication.
♦ New NSF grant with Nick Diakopoulos and Daniel Romero. Excited to study as part of this award science communication in the ecosystem of digital media platforms.
♦ New paper in PNAS with Orsolya Vásárhelyi, Igor Zakhlebin, and Stasa Milojevic about bias in the online visibility of female scholars.
♦ New paper in Social Media + Society with Eszter Hargittai about digital inequality in social media repertoires.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

See my CV for a complete listing.

H Peng, D Romero, E-Á Horvát, Dynamics of cross-platform attention to retracted papers, PNAS 119 (25) e2119086119, 2022 [link] [Selected press coverage: Inside Higher Ed, The Washington Post, Le Monde, Phys.org, BigNewsNetwork, and Deutschlandfunk (German Public Radio)]

E-Á Horvát and B Uzzi, Virtual collaboration hinders a key component of creativity, Nature News & Views 605(7908): 38--39, 2022 [link]

O Vásárhelyi, I Zakhlebin, S Milojevic, E-Á Horvát, Gender inequities in the online dissemination of scholars’ work, PNAS 118 (39) e2102945118, 2021 [link] [Selected press coverage: EurekAlert!, Inside Higher Ed, The Science Advisory Board, Physics World, heidi.news]

E-Á Horvát and E Hargittai, Birds of a feather flock together online: Digital inequality in social media repertoires, Social Media + Society 2021 [link] [Blog entry on Crooked Timber]

N Hagar, J Wachs and E-Á Horvát, Writer movements between news outlets reflect political polarization in media, New Media & Society 2021 [link] [Selected press coverage: Niskanen Center, RQ1, Der Tagesspiegel]

H Dambanemuya and E-Á Horvát, A multi-platform study of crowd signals associated with successful online fundraising, Proceedings of the ACM (PACM) Human-Computer Interaction CSCW 2021 [link]