Events
Past Event
WED@NICO SEMINAR: Jennifer Cutler, Northwestern University "Scaling Up Social Media-Based Marketing Research"
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
Title:
Scaling Up Social Media-Based Marketing Research
Speaker:
Jennifer Cutler - Assistant Professor of Marketing, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
Talk Abstract:
Social media contain a wealth of information about consumers and market structures, and this has many marketers excited about the potential uses for such data. However, it is often not straightforward or cost-effective to process these data for reliable marketing insights. In particular, many approaches to commonly desired problems (such as classifying text by topic or classifying users by demographics) rely on supervised machine learning methods, which require (often extensive) labelled training data. Such data can be difficult to obtain, and, due to the idiosyncratic and rapidly evolving user behavior on different platforms (e.g., “netspeak” slang), can become out-of-date quickly. In this talk, I will explore ways of leveraging the organic structure of social media data to circumvent the need for curated training data, resulting in unsupervised or distantly-supervised algorithms that are flexible, scalable, and highly automated. I will share examples of how such methods can be applied towards problems such as classifying marketer and user-generated text by topic, predicting demographic traits of users, and estimating the strength of brand image associations.
Speaker Bio:
Jennifer Cutler's research focuses on understanding perceptual dynamics in social networks and developing methods for extracting marketing insights from social media. Her work, which blends advances in quantitative marketing, social psychology, and artificial intelligence, has received awards from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the National Business and Economics Society, and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development.
Live Stream:
Time
Wednesday, October 4, 2017 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
Fall 2026 Classes Begin
University Academic Calendar
All Day
Details
Fall 2026 Classes Begin
Time
Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Contact
Calendar
University Academic Calendar
NICO Reading Group - Fall 2026 First Meeting
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
6:00 PM
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Chambers Hall
Details
The NICO Reading Group meets for the first this fall on Wednesday, September 23, 2026. Please contact Jaeseon Ha if you are interested in joining our group.
About:
The NICO Reading Group brings together people across disciplines to read and discuss important ideas in modern AI. We focus on topics such as AI agents, tuning, harnesses, evaluation, AI for scientific discovery, and applications of AI across different fields. The goal is to understand important ideas in AI more deeply by learning and thinking across disciplines.
Leadership:
Jaeseon Ha, a Kellogg MBA + AI student, will lead the reading group during the Fall 2026 term. Please contact Jaeseon with any questions or reach out to us at nico@northwestern.edu.
Meeting Times:
Date: Biweekly on Wednesday evening, starting on September 23, 2026
Time: 6-7pm
Location: NICO main office, Chambers Hall,
600 Foster St, Evanston, IL 60208
Time
Wednesday, September 23, 2026 at 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Location
Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
WED@NICO Seminar Series returns on September 30, 2026
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)
12:00 PM
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Lower Level, Chambers Hall
Details
The Wednesdays@NICO seminar series returns September 30, 2026, running through November 11, 2026, with the following speakers.
9/30/2026 - Luis Amaral, Northwestern University
10/7/2026 - Kristina Lerman, Indiana University
10/14/2026 - Tim Tangherlini, University of California, Berkeley
10/21/2026 - Andreia Sofia Teixeira, Northeastern University London
10/28/2026 - Rafael Prieto-Curiel, Complexity Science Hub, Vienna
11/4/2026 - Hamsa Bastani, University of Pennsylvania
11/11/2026 - Mayank Agrawal, Proof of Human
We will share detailed speaker information, talk titles and abstracts, in the coming weeks.
Location:
In person: Chambers Hall, 600 Foster Street, Lower Level
Remote option TBA
About the Speaker Series:
Wednesdays@NICO is a vibrant weekly seminar series focusing broadly on the topics of complex systems, networks, and artificial intelligence. It brings together attendees ranging from graduate students to senior faculty who span all of the schools across Northwestern, from applied math to sociology to biology and every discipline in-between. Please visit: https://bit.ly/WedatNICO for information on future speakers.
Time
Wednesday, September 30, 2026 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location
Lower Level, Chambers Hall Map
Contact
Calendar
Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO)