My research interests are in Computational Social Science, Social Computing, and Natural Language Processing. My PhD thesis work focuses on social meaning of language variation in online writing. I use computational approaches from statistics, causal inference for observational data, machine learning, natural language processing and network analysis to study linguistic and social phenomena in online social platforms. I am interested in sociolinguistic theories such as audience design, style-shifting, and accommodation and how these theories apply to modern social media language. My recent research interests include norm enforcement in online social platforms, hate speech, incivility, and trolling.

RECENT PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS AND POSTERS   [Google Scholar]
Linguistic Norm Enforcement in Wikipedia: Effects of NPOV tagging. [pdf] [slides] Umashanthi Pavalanathan, Xiaochuang Han, and Jacob Eisenstein.
(Under review)
Interactional Stancetaking in Online Forums. [pdf] [slides] Scott F. Kiesling, Umashanthi Pavalanathan, Jim Fitzpatrick, Xiaochuang Han, and Jacob Eisenstein.
Computational Linguistics Special Issue on Language in Social Media: Exploiting discourse and other contextual information (under review)
You Can’t Stay Here: The Efficacy of Reddit’s 2015 Ban Examined Through Hate Speech. [pdf] [slides] [NY Times]
Eshwar Chandrasekharan, Umashanthi Pavalanathan, Anirudh Srinivasan, Adam Glynn, Jacob Eisenstein, and Eric Gilbert
Proceedings of the ACM Human-Computer Interaction, to be presented at CSCW 2018
A Multidimensional Lexicon for Interpersonal Stancetaking. [pdf] [slides]
Umashanthi Pavalanathan, James Fitzpatrick, Scott Kiesling, and Jacob Eisenstein
Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2017)
What (or Who) Is Public? Privacy Settings and Social Media Content Sharing. [pdf] [slides]
Casey Fiesler, Michaelanne Dye, Jess Feuston, Chaya Hiruncharoenvate, C.J. Hutto, Parisa Roshan, Umashanthi Pavalanathan, Amy Bruckman, Munmun De Choudhury, and Eric Gilbert.
20th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2017), February 2017
Studying Military Community Health, Well-Being, and Discourse Through the Social Media Lens. [pdf][slides]
Umashanthi Pavalanathan, Vivek Datla, Svitlana Volkova, Lauren Charles-Smith, Meg Pirrung, Josh Harrison, Alan Chappell, and Courtney D Corley.
In Shaban-Nejad A., Brownstein J., Buckeridge D. (eds) Public Health Intelligence and the Internet. Lecture Notes in Social Networks. Springer, p 87-105, 2017
More emojis, less emoticons: The Competition for Paralinguistic Function in Microblog Writing. [link]
Umashanthi Pavalanathan and Jacob Eisenstein
First Monday, November 2016
Stance Markers, Reddit Thread Structure, and Community. [pdf] [slides]
Umashanthi Pavalanathan, James Fitzpatrick, Scott Kiesling, and Jacob Eisenstein
New Ways of Analyzing Variation (NWAV) 45, November 2016
Emoticons vs. Emojis on Twitter: A Causal Inference Approach. [pdf] [slides]
Umashanthi Pavalanathan and Jacob Eisenstein
AAAI Spring Symposium on Observational Studies through Social Media and Other Human-Generated Content, March 2016
Discourse, Health and Well-being of Military Populations Through the Social Media Lens. [pdf][slides]
Umashanthi Pavalanathan, Vivek Datla, Svitlana Volkova, Lauren Charles-Smith, Meg Pirrung, Josh Harrison, Alan Chappell, and Courtney D Corley
The 3rd International Workshop on the World Wide Web and Population Health Intelligence, In Conjunction with the Thirtieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-16), February 2016
Confounds and Consequences in Geotagged Twitter Data. [pdf]
Umashanthi Pavalanathan and Jacob Eisenstein
Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP 2015)
Audience-Modulated Variation in Online Social Media. [preprint] [journal] [Washington Post] [Discover Magazine]
Umashanthi Pavalanathan and Jacob Eisenstein
American Speech Journal, 90(2), May 2015.
Identity Management and Mental Health Discourse in Social Media. [pdf]
Umashanthi Pavalanathan and Munmun De Choudhury
24th International Conference on World Wide Web Companion (WWW 2015)
The Development of a Stance Annotation Scheme: Lessons for Computational Linguistics and Sociolinguistic Theory. [pdf][slides]
Scott Kiesling, Jacob Eisenstein, James Fitzpatrick, and Umashanthi Pavalanathan
Southeastern Conference on Linguistics (SECOL 82)
Linguistic Style-shifting in Online Social Media.
Umashanthi Pavalanathan and Jacob Eisenstein
ACL Joint Workshop on Social Dynamics and Personal Attributes in Social Media 2014. [Presentation]
Language Variation In Context In Online Social Media.
Umashanthi Pavalanathan and Jacob Eisenstein
Atlanta Workshop on Computational Social Science, 2013. [Poster]


My undergraduate research was more systems oriented where I focused on data management, semantic web technologies and building business process management systems.
PREVIOUS PUBLICATIONS AND POSTERS
Miao Chen,Umashanthi Pavalanathan Scott Jensen and Beth Plale. Modeling Heterogeneous Data Resources for Social-Ecological Research: A Data-Centric Perspective , Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL 2013), Indianapolis, IN, ACM/IEEE, Jul 2013
Umashanthi Pavalanathan, K. Gallaba, I. Jayawardena, E. Sooriyabandara and V. Nanayakkara.  Levi – A Workflow Engine using BPMN 2.0, CeBPM’12: Workshop on Cloud-enabled Business Process Management, in conjunction with the 13th International Conference on Web Information System Engineering (WISE), Paphos, Cyprus, November 2012. (*)
Umashanthi Pavalanathan, B. Plale, et al.  Biodiversity Data Exchange Using PRAGMA Cloud, PRAGMA 23: Pacific Rim Applications and Grid Middleware Assembly 23 Workshop, Seoul, South Korea, October 2012 [Poster].
Umashanthi Pavalanathan.  Utilizing Social Media for Education, Research and Career Development, GHC’12: Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing 2012, Baltimore, Maryland, USA, October 2012 [Poster].
Umashanthi Pavalanathan, Y.Luo and B. Plale.  Vortex2 Metadata Management on PRAGMA Cloud: A GeoPortal Experience, PRAGMA 22: Pacific Rim Applications and Grid Middleware Assembly 22 Workshop, Melbourne, Australia, April 2012 [Poster].
K. Gallaba, I. Jayawardena, E. Sooriyabandara, Umashanthi Pavalanathan and V. Nanayakkara.  Levi – The Native BPMN 2.0 Execution Engine, YSF’11: Young Scientists Forum Technical Session, organized by the National Science and Technology Commission, Colombo, Sri Lanka, January 2012 [Poster]. (*)
K. Gallaba, I. Jayawardena, E. Sooriyabandara, Umashanthi Pavalanathan and V. Nanayakkara.  An analysis of BPMN 2.0 as a Business Process Execution Language, 17th ERU Research Symposium, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, December 2011. (*)
K. Gallaba, I. Jayawardena, E. Sooriyabandara, Umashanthi Pavalanathan and V. Nanayakkara.  Levi – The Native BPMN 2.0 Execution Engine, CS&ES Conference, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, November 2011. (*)
Umashanthi Pavalanathan.  Smart E-cards – Joomla Component Development, CSE Symposium, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, April 2010.

PREVIOUS TALKS AND PRESENTATIONS
Umashanthi Pavalanathan and A.Stewart, Biodiversity Data Exchange Using PRAGMA Cloud, PRAGMA 23: Pacific Rim Applications and Grid Middleware Assembly 23 Workshop, Seoul, South Korea, October 2012 [Demonstration].
Umashanthi Pavalanathan . Promoting Women in Free and Open Source Software Development, InWIC’12: Indiana Women in Computing Celebrations 2012, Indiana, USA, February 2012 [Lightening Talk].
Umashanthi Pavalanathan, K. Gallaba, I. Jayawardena and E. Sooriyabandara.  A Study of Cyber Warfare Associated with WikiLeaks, Cyber Warfare Conference, organized Information Technology and Communications Engineering Sectional Committee of the Institution of Engineers, Sri Lanka, February 2011 [Presentation]. (*)

(*) First four authors contributed equally to this work.