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 Munmun De Choudhury, social and computer science expert

Munmun De Choudhury

Associate Professor

College of Computing School of Interactive Computing

Best known for her foundational research on the intersection of societal mental health and social media interactions, Munmun is an expert in social and computer science.

Trained as a computer scientist, Munmun De Choudhury’s research interests lie in machine learning, social media, and health. She is passionate about uncovering problems at the intersection of computer science and social science. De Choudhury leads The SocWeB Lab, where she studies, analyzes, and uses social media to derive computational, large-scale data-driven insights, and to develop mechanisms and technologies for understanding and improving our mental health and well-being. She received her Ph.D. in computer science in 2011 at Arizona State University, Tempe. De Choudhury’s research has pioneered the computational use of social media data for mental health.

News and Recent Appearances

Researchers to Study Connection Between Online Misinformation and Real-World Violence

Srijan Kumar and Munmun De Choudhury receive CDC grant

Likelihood of Dieting Success Lies Within Your Tweets

Georgia Tech researchers have determined that attitudes expressed on social media can predict dieting success.

Social Media Study Identifies Mental Health Culture at Top-Ranked Campuses

Using social media, researchers create a mental health index for country's top-ranked colleges.

Lawmakers Want Social Media Companies to Stop Getting Kids Hooked

Wired

Tech companies “are barely scratching the surface” of what they might do to help support young users, says Munmun de Choudhury, who studies the intersection of social media and mental health and founded the Social Dynamics and Wellbeing Lab at Georgia Tech. Apps like TikTok and Instagram can be resources for teens to explore their identities, form communities, and learn about mental health. Instead of banning social media outright, she says, legislation should push companies to understand young people and to rethink the mechanisms that keep kids scrolling past their own comfort level without restricting the ways the platforms can be helpful.

Is Everybody Doing … OK? Let’s Ask Social Media

The New York Times

Munmun De Choudhury, a professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, is also examining digital data for insights into well-being. Dr. De Choudhury’s work over the years has focused not only on population studies, like the Hedonometer, but also on the individual.

In 2013, she and colleagues found that by looking at new mothers on social media, they were able to help predict which ones might develop postpartum depression, based on their posts before the birth of their babies. One of the most telling signs? The use of first-person singular pronouns, like “I” and “me.”

 

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