PhD

ePortfolio  · 

My PhD in a Nutshell

In my PhD research, my main dissertation projects were focused on Europe, specifically on the study of family ties; immigrants’ cultural integration; and older people use of information and communication technologies to maintain friendships. For my projects, I relied on analyzing data retrieved using Facebook and Twitter Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), through statistical methods together with natural language processing. Besides this, I also contributed to a major project in which behavioral data was surveyed via Facebook. The final PhD thesis can be accessed here.

PhD Projects

Older People and Facebook

For my first two dissertation articles, I used data retrieved from Facebook to study older people’s use of social network sites and how this is associated with the likelihood of having close friends. To do so, first, I gathered the data using the Facebook API to build an index of the differential usage of Facebook by age Article. Then, I studied the structure of the data in order to determine the best statistical models to analyze the daily active users, and to compare them against survey data Article. You can learn more about this project in the interview I did for MPIDR link. All the codes to replicate this work are available in my Github link and link.

Immigrants and Language Acquisition

For my third dissertation article, I used data from Twitter to study migrants’ language integration. To do so, I processed terabytes of Twitter-data stored in the Internet Archive link and complemented it by retrieving some data using the Twitter API. To analyze migrants’ language acquisition, I automatized the analysis of users’ tweets in order to categorized them as migrants and to track the language they used in a longitudinal manner. For this, I relied on natural language processing and on survival analysis. The final article is here and its working paper here. All the codes to replicate this work are available in my Github link.

Twitter and Family Ties

My final dissertation article explored whether the European family ties division is reflected in Twitter users’ conversations. For this, I relied on the geo-located tweets stored in the Internet Archive link and used multilevel generalized models to analyze the data. The working paper can be accessed here.

Non-Dissertation Projects

As an expert on the use of the Facebook API, I was invited to contribute to a major project in which behavioral data was surveyed via Facebook. Here is all the information related with this project: The COVID-19 Health Behavior Survey.

Invited and Organized Events during my PhD

Beneath you can find small descriptions of events that I have been invited or I have organized.

Invited Events

  1. Invited speaker at the Permanent Seminar Aplicaciones de ciencia de datos en las ciencias sociales y las humanidades of El Colegio de México. Presentation: “La asociación entre las políticas de integración cívica y de ciudadanía con el uso de la lengua de destino de los inmigrantes de la UE-15: Uso de datos de Twitter para analizar la adquisición de idiomas” (You can find the video here). November 2022.

  2. Gave a virtual training Workshop at El Colegio de Mexico “V Coloquio Internacional Estudiantil en Población, Ciudad y Ambiente”: Uso de APIs para la descarga de datos link. April 2022. The material is freely available here.

  3. Mesa redonda: Huellas Digitales para el Conocimiento Demográfico video Invitada a la mesa redonda Huellas Digitales para el Conocimiento Demográfico de la XVI Jornadas Argentinas de Estudios de Población (AEPA), organizado por Iván Williams. October 2021.

  4. Roundtable Demographic Research with Web and Social Media Data video Invited to the roundtable Demographic Research with Web and Social Media Data at the Latin American Population Association (ALAP), organized by Diego Alburez-Gutierrez (MPIDR). December 2021.

Organized Events

  1. Workshop Demographic Research with Web and Social Media Data link This workshop was organized by Diego Alburez-Gutierrez (MPIDR), Emilio Zagheni (MPIDR) and me. It was a collaboration between the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) and the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP). It took place at the International Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM) in Munich on June 11th, 2019.

  2. Accessing and Making Sense of Digital Trace Data for Demographic Research link video code This training workshop was organized by Emilio Zagheni (MPIDR) and me, it was part of the event Digital Demography in the Era of Big Data.