Dr. Megan Stubbs-Richardson is an Associate Research Professor at the Social Science Research Center (SSRC) of Mississippi State University. She directs the Data Science for Social Sciences Laboratory at the SSRC. She is leading one of the laboratory's missions to develop open-source social media-based infrastructure projects, aiming to broaden participation in social media research. Dr. Stubbs-Richardson has been a PI or Co-PI on projects funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), and the Department of Defense (DoD). She has been conducting social media data analyses at the SSRC since 2012. In her research, she utilizes digital data to identify crime patterns and trends, while also examining the role of digital data in crime prevention and control. She served as the principal investigator (PI) for the COPE-ID project, which initially provided nearly 15 million posts about how people coped during the pandemic on ten social media platforms. The database is now paired with the data visualization and analytics tool (DataViz), enabling users to easily draw down data samples and blend social and computational scientific research methods to examine the data.

Contribution to Project: PI, Dr. Stubbs-Richardson (Sociology Social Scientist), directs the Data Science for Social Sciences (DS3) laboratory and has worked with social media data since 2012. Dr. Stubbs-Richardson often collaborates with SBE scientists and computer scientists to integrate data science and social science methods across large volumes of social media data, examining various social problems. For this initiative, she has provided oversight of the two awards (NSF #2031246 and #2318438) while also leading the development of user guides for the COPE-ID database and data visualization tool (DataViz), as well as associated methods, including topic modeling user guides. She also led the effort to broaden research participation in social media data by sharing presentations with potential users and then evaluating the effectiveness of the COPE-ID data visualization tool.

Dr. Sujan Anreddy joined the SSRC in January 2018 as a computer specialist and, after completing his Ph.D., was named an Assistant Research Professor. He currently works on the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) funded project, “Child Health and Development Project” where he is designing and managing an integrated database that links educational records from the MS Department of Education (MDE) with health records from the Division of Medicaid and the Mississippi State Department of Health. As part of managing this integrated database, he addresses technical issues related to system maintenance and data quality, including integration, consistency, and integrity, and provides support to data analysts. Additionally, given his expertise in data visualization, he provides the SSRC with the capacity to develop data dashboards and interactive visualizations. Dr. Anreddy holds a doctorate in Computer Science from Mississippi State University, with a specialization in data visualization. His expertise and research interests include applying and evaluating machine learning algorithms, as well as building visual patterns using interactive visualization techniques to help analysts explore, identify, and comprehend big data features at multiple levels.

Contribution to Project: Co-PI, Dr. Sujan Anreddy (Visual Analytics Computer Scientist), has years of experience developing visual analytical products for public health and safety needs. His expertise in visual analytics and prior experience mentoring computer science graduate and undergraduate students working with social media data were informative for the objectives outlined in this project.

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1939-7266

Dr. Terri N. Hernandez is an Associate Professor of Public Relations in the Department of Communication, Media & Theatre at Mississippi State University, where she also serves as the Public Relations Concentration Coordinator. Her research explores the intersections of social and digital media, intergroup and intragroup relations, and consumer behavior, with a focus on organization–public relationships, branding, and strategic communication. She has years of experience working with social media datasets, applying quantitative and qualitative methodologies to explore the data. Further, her scholarship spans both theoretical and applied domains, integrating insights from social science with professional practice, such as user experience design in websites and other digital applications. Her collaborative work with the NSF and MSU’s SSRC has expanded her expertise into large-scale data analytics, machine learning, and interdisciplinary research infrastructure. In particular, her recent NSF-funded projects involve building data repositories and developing methods to analyze social media data, addressing challenges such as restricted access to platforms like X (formerly Twitter). By creating accessible research tools, she aims to support scholars in examining critical social phenomena, including the spread of misinformation and public sentiment during crises. Dr. Hernandez’s work has appeared in leading journals, including the Journal of Consumer Marketing, Social Media and Society, and Computers & Human Behavior. She has co-authored multiple peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, and her creative scholarship has earned more than 30 professional awards from PR associations, including SPRF and PRAM.

Contribution to Project: Co-PI, Dr. Terri Hernandez (Communication & UX Design Social Scientist), brings a unique interdisciplinary background that bridges strategic communication, user experience design and evaluation, and applied social media research. Her expertise in human-centered design and digital communication was critical to shaping the tool’s overall architecture, interface, and user engagement strategy. Dr. Hernandez previously developed and managed the COPE-ID and DS3 websites, projects closely associated with the DataViz tool, demonstrating her ability to translate complex research goals into intuitive, accessible digital platforms. Within this project, Dr. Hernandez played a central role in leading the conceptualization, design, and iterative refinement of the tool’s webpage and application interface—ensuring the tool was responsive to social media researchers needs and grounded in best practices for conducting social science research, particularly research conducted using methods such as content analysis and textual analysis. She collaborated closely with team members Jacob Adams and Madeline Burdine to ensure the interface was not only functional but also user-friendly and aligned with the project’s intended audiences, all of which leaned into best practices in UX design and accessibility. Her leadership extended through the user evaluation phases—from early-stage design prototyping through the final evaluation, where she oversaw the development and implementation of testing protocols, analyzed user feedback, and facilitated evidence-based enhancements to the tool.