Natalie Tong

Education

Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
Ph.D. Student in Information Science
Committee Members: Michael Macy (chairperson), Lillian Lee

May 13- Sep 14

Relevant Industry Experience



 

FCB New York, Senior Social Media Analyst, New York, NY
▪ Tracked efficacy of the FDA’s “The Real Cost” anti-smoking campaign across four social media channels
▪ Discern common topics on social media around campaign PSAs, vaping, and smoking in general
▪ Identified central influencers in conversation about smoking using network analysis
▪ Coordinated with social media marketing partners to effectively guide the FDA's social media strategy

Converseon Inc., Social Media Analyst, New York, NY
▪ Explored topics on social media for Fortune 500 companies including Twitter, IBM, and Nissan
▪ Identified key influencers across various markets using network analysis of social media data
▪ Managed a team of freelancers and Amazon Turkers for data coding, and ensured reliability of that data

YPulse, Marketing Intern, New York, NY
▪ Devised, programmed, and analyzed youth-targeted surveys for major entertainment corporations
▪ Led community management and troubleshooting with survey subjects

Echo Chambers, Social Identity, and Social Polarization (NSF Proposal in Review) 
PI: Michael Macy; in collaboration with Alexander Ruch and Sebastian Deri
▪ Conducting online-based experiments to determine whether the interaction between echo chambers and social identity plays a major role in the process of polarization

Music Lab 2.0 (NSF Proposal in Review) 
PI: Michael Macy; in collaboration with Alexander Ruch and Sebastian Deri
▪ Extending the Salganik, Dodds, Watts (2006) experiment to explore whether opposing social identities can generate arbitrary correlations in beliefs, hobbies, and lifestyles

Tracking Critical-Mass Outbreaks in Social Contagion During the Arab Spring
PI: Michael Macy; in collaboration with Christopher Cameron, Wei Dong, Tom Davidson, Minsu Park, Tony Sirianni, and Chris Browne. This project is funded by MINERVA.
▪ Determining if the start of and changes to the Egyptian Arab Spring can be predicted using the adoption rates and dynamic network properties of viral political hashtags on Twitter

Conduits to the Alt-Right - Exploring Drivers of Alt-Right Participation on Reddit
In collaboration with Sydney Zink and Lillian Lee
▪ Attempting to disentangle drivers of alt-right sub-community participation by exploring participant user histories (primarily through previous sub-community participation and language data)

The Impact of Network Topology and the Navigation of Norms on Popularity on Reddit
Undergraduate Thesis for the Rutgers University Sociology Honors Program; Advised by Paul McLean
▪ Explored the the interaction between network structure, norms, and popularity on the site, Reddit
▪  Observed differences in behavior between “one-hit wonder” and “celebrity” users
▪ Awarded Henry Rutgers Scholar Award for the project

The Ethnically Ambiguous Generation: Perceptions of Interracial Families in Television Commercials
Undergraduate Research Assistant for Crystal Bedley and Catherine Lee (Sociology)
▪ Explored the presence of ethnically ambiguous roles in ads and their efficacy in targeting minorities
▪ Gathered and coded data on uncertainty in the perception of race and ethnicity in TV and online ads

A Theme Analysis of Issues Reported by Adult Children of Alcoholics in Online Support Forums
Undergraduate Research Assistant for Marie Haverfield and Jennifer Theiss (Communicatiosn)
▪ Identified and coded types of support in an online community for adult children of alcoholics (ACoAs)
▪ Found that ACoAs often expressed support in terms of solidarity - often focusing on seven themes (e.g. problems with romantic relationships, low self-esteem, or lack of a connection with one's inner-child)

Summer School Series on Methods for Computational Social Science, Sardinia, Italy

Honors & Awards

Research Skills

▪ Spoken Languages - English (native), Chinese - Shanghainese Dialect (elementary), Japanese (elementary), Spanish (elementary)
▪ Programming Languages – Python and R
▪ Python Libraries – scikit-learn, SciPy, NetworkX, Igraph, NLTK, matplotlib, plotly, NumPy, pandas, PySpark
▪ Database Usage – MongoDB, SQL, Google BigQuery
▪ Amazon Mechanical Turk
▪ Network Visualization Suites – Gephi, Cytoscape, Pajek
▪ Survey Creation Suites – Qualtrics, Globalpark EFS, SelectSurvey.NET, SurveyMonkey