讲座题目：Suicidal ideation detection and Intervention from social media

演讲人：张东松（美国北卡罗来纳大学夏洛特校区商学院商业信息系统系贝克讲座教授、计算机系客座教授）

讲座时间：2019年 7月4日（周四）14:30

讲座地点：嘉庚二205

主持人：蔡舜（皇冠hg1088官方管理科学系教授）

讲座摘要：Suicidal ideation, also known as suicidal thoughts, is extremely detrimental and dangerous and thus is considered as psychiatric emergency that requires immediate assistance from mental health professionals. Current intervention methods are passive and reactive because they require individuals with suicidal ideation to take the initiative, which is neither timely nor effectively. In view that people with suicidal ideation increasingly share their thoughts and emotions online, social media have become a viable source for timely detection and intervention of suicidal ideation. This study proposes, designs, deploys, and assesses a transformative and integrative approach to social media based suicidal ideation detection and intervention. Two key novel design artifacts of SOP3 include using a deep neural network model for effective detection of suicidal ideation from microblogs and a proactive, participatory, and problem-solving based intervention via a social media platform. We empirically tested those design artifacts through an analysis of real-world microblog posts collected from Sina Weibo and through an online field experiment with individuals who were detected with suicidal ideation. The results show that the proposed deep neural network models outperformed traditional classification models by a wide margin. The findings from both quantitative and qualitative feedback of the field experiment demonstrated users’ acceptance and positive perceptions of the proposed method, which is critical for realizing its real-world impacts. The proposed research artifacts and findings of this study have significant research implications and broad practical impacts for improving the mental health of the public.

演讲人简介：Dr. Dongsong Zhang received his Ph.D. in Management Information Systems from the University of Arizona in 2002. He is currently a Belk Endowed Chair Professor at the Belk School of Business at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA. His primary research interests include business analytics, online communities, health IT, and social media analytics. He has published approximately 150 research articles in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, including more than 50 papers in SCI and SSCI journals. His research has been supported by U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. National Institute of Health, Department of Education, Google, Inc., and National Natural Science Foundation of China, etc. Dr. Zhang has served as the general chair or a program chair of a number of international conferences. He has also served as a panelist or a grant proposal reviewer for U.S. National Science Foundation, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and Research Council of Hong Kong, etc. He is a senior or associate editor of several international journals.