Libby Hemphill

Prior to joining ICPSR as RCMD director in September 2017, Hemphill was at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where she was Associate Professor of Communication and Information Studies in the Lewis College of Human Sciences. She received her PhD from the University of Michigan’s School of Information. Her research is interdisciplinary and draws on theory and methods from communication studies, information science, and computer science to investigate online behavior. Her greatest scholarly impact has been in the area of political expression in social media, in particular the development of the #Polar Score which can be used to identify the partisan valence of a Twitter stream (e.g., allowing determination of an individual politician’s partisan orientation). Hemphill’s current research, supported by the National Science Foundation, examines how social media can be used by rural and marginalized urban populations to increase civic engagement. Her research and engagement with the changing role of data and data access to underrepresented and marginalized communities fits with and will provide a valuable basis for leadership of the Resource Center for Minority Data at ICPSR.