University of Michigan

Daniel M. Romero

I am a Professor of Information, Complex Systems, and Computer Science at the University of Michigan.

I study how network structure, identity, and relational context impact the production and dissemination of information, knowledge, culture, and behavior in online, scientific, and organizational settings.

I received my Ph.D. at the Cornell University Center for Applied Mathematics, where I was advised by Jon Kleinberg. Before coming to Michigan, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Northwestern University Institute on Complex Systems, working with Brian Uzzi.

Publications

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Newest first

  1. A Test of Time: Modeling the Long-Term Success of Crowd Collaborations

    A. Israeli, D. Jurgens, and D.M. Romero.

    PNAS Nexus , 5, 8, 2026.

    Supplemental MaterialData and Code

  2. The Impact of Generative AI on Social Media: An Experimental Study

    A.G. Møller, D.M. Romero, D. Jurgens, and L.M. Aiello.

    Sci Rep , 16, 9376, 2026.

    Supplemental MaterialData and CodeBlog
    Press coverage: BBC The Guardian Brookings

  3. The Persistence of Retracted Papers on Wikipedia

    H. Shi, Y. Yu, D., D.M. Romero, and E-Á. Horvát.

    Proc. 29th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), 2026.

  4. Agentic AI: User Empowerment or Foreclosure?

    D. Gamba, D., D.M. Romero, and G. Schoenebeck.

    Proc. of the AAAI ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES), 2026.

  5. The Gender Gap in Scholarly Self-Promotion on Social Media.

    H. Peng, M. Teplitskiy, D.M. Romero, and E-Á. Horvát.

    Nature Communications , 16, 5552, 2025.

    Supplemental MaterialData and Code

  6. Evaluating Interdisciplinary Research: Disparate Outcomes for Topic and Knowledge Base.

    S. Xiang, D.M. Romero, and M. Teplitskiy.

    Proc. National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) , 122 (16) e2409752122, 2025.

    Supplemental MaterialData and Code

  7. Timing and Cross-Platform Presence Shape the Online Dissemination of Science.

    J. Córdova, E-Á. Horvát, and D.M. Romero.

    EPJ Data Sci , 14, 63, 2025.

  8. Roles of Network and Identity in Hashtag Diffusion.

    A. Ananthasubramaniam, D. Jurgens, and D.M. Romero.

    Proc. of The ACM Web Conference (WWW), 2025.

    Data and Code

  9. Multiplatform Early Predictors of Academic Articles' Visibility and Citations.

    J. Córdova, T. Hirose, H. Shi, E-Á. Horvát, and D.M. Romero.

    Proc. of The ACM Collective Intelligence Conference (CI), 2025.

  10. Scholarly Disengagement as an Epistemic Crisis: Clickbait, Credibility, and the Decline of Public-Facing Science.

    M. Bhat, D.M. Romero, and and E-Á. Horvát.

    Proc. of The ACM Collective Intelligence Conference (CI), 2025.

  11. Signals in the Noise: Decoding Unexpected Engagement Patterns on Twitter.

    Y. Yu, H. Chen, D.M. Romero, and P. Dhillon.

    Proc. 28th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), 2025.

  12. Research Topic Choice: Motivations, Strategies, and Consequences.

    S. Xiang, D.M. Romero, and M. Teplitskiy.

    Quantitative Science Studies , 1-66, 2025.

  13. Demographic Disparity in Wikipedia Coverage: A Global Perspective.

    Y. Yu, X. Li, T. Li, P. Dhillon, and D.M. Romero.

    EPJ Data Sci , 14, 15, 2025.

  14. Does the Use of Unusual Combinations of Datasets Contribute to Greater Scientific Impact?

    Y. Yu and D.M. Romero.

    Proc. National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) , 121 (41) e2402802121, 2024.

    Supplemental MaterialData and Code

  15. Networks and Identity Drive the Spatial Diffusion of Linguistic Innovation in Urban and Rural Areas.

    A. Ananthasubramaniam, D. Jurgens, and D.M. Romero.

    npj Complex , 1, 14, 2024.

    Supplemental MaterialData and Code

  16. Exit Ripple Effects: Understanding the Disruption of Socialization Networks Following Employee Departures.

    D. Gamba, Y. Yu, Y. Yuan, G. Schoenebeck, and D.M. Romero.

    Proc. of The ACM Web Conference (WWW), 2024.

  17. Profile Update: The Effects of Identity Disclosure on Network Connections and Language.

    M. Choi, D.M. Romero, and D. Jurgens.

    EPJ Data Sci , 45, 2024.

    Supplemental MaterialData and Code

  18. Emergent Influence Networks in Good-Faith Online Discussions.

    H.K. Dambanemuya, D.M. Romero, and E-Á. Horvát.

    Proc. 18th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2024.

  19. Social Acceptability of Health Behavior Posts on Social Media: An Experiment.

    A.N. Bhogal, V.J. Berrocal, D.M. Romero, M.A. Willis, V.G.V. Vydiswaran, and T.C. Veinot.

    American Journal of Preventive Medicine , 66(5), 870-876, 2024

  20. Pulling Through Together: Social Media Response Trajectories in Disaster-Stricken Communities.

    D. Maldeniya, M. De Choudhury, D. Garcia, and D.M. Romero.

    Journal of Computational Social Science , 1-52, 2023.

  21. Analyzing the Engagement of Social Relationships During Life Event Shocks in Social Media.

    M. Choi, D. Jurgens, and D.M. Romero.

    Proc. 17th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2023.

  22. Information Retention in the Multi-Platform Sharing of Science.

    S. Hwang, E-Á. Horvát, and D.M. Romero.

    Proc. 17th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2023.

  23. Dynamics of Cross-Platform Attention to Retracted Papers.

    H. Peng, D.M. Romero, and E-Á. Horvát.

    Proc. National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) , 119 (25) e2119086119, 2022.

    Supplemental MaterialData and Code
    Press coverage: The Washington Post Inside Higher Ed Le Monde (In French) Deutschlandfunk (German Radio)

  24. Equitable Research PRAXIS: A Framework for Health Informatics Methods.

    T.C. Veinot, P.J., Clarke, D.M. Romero, L.R. Buis, T.R. Dillahunt, V.G.V. Vydiswaran, A. Beals, L. Brown, O.Richards, A. Williamson, and M.G. Antonio.

    IMIA Yearbook of Medical Informatics , 31(01), 307-316, 2022.

  25. Caste Capital on Twitter: A Formal Network Analysis of Caste Relations among Indian Politicians.

    P. Vaghela, R.K. Mothilal, D.M. Romero, and J. Pal.

    Proc. 25th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), 2022.

  26. Neural Embeddings of Scholarly Periodicals Reveal Complex Disciplinary Organizations.

    H. Peng, Q. Ke, C. Budak, D.M. Romero, and YY Ahn.

    Science Advances, 7, eabb9004, 2021.

    Supplementary MaterialDataCode

  27. More than Meets the Tie: Examining the Role of Interpersonal Relationships in Social Networks.

    M. Choi, C. Budak, D.M. Romero, and D. Jurgens.

    Proc. 15th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2021.

    Supplemental MaterialCodeVideo and Poster

  28. Network Modularity Controls the Speed of Information Diffusion.

    H. Peng, A. Nematzadeh, D.M. Romero, and E. Ferrara.

    Phys. Rev. E, 102, 052316, 2020.

    Supplemental Material

  29. Herding a Deluge of Good Samaritans: How GitHub Projects Respond to Increased Attention.

    D. Maldeniya, C. Budak, L. Robert, and D.M. Romero.

    Proc. of The ACM Web Conference (WWW), 2020.

    SlidesVideo

  30. Uncovering the relationship between food-related discussion on Twitter and neighborhood characteristics.

    V.G.V. Vydiswaran, D.M. Romero, X. Zhao, D. Yu, I. Gomez-Lopez, J.X. Lu, B.E. Iott, A. Baylin, E.C. Jansen, P. Clarke, V.J. Berrocal, R. Goodspeed, and T.C. Veinot.

    Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (JAMIA) , 27(2), 254-264, 2020.

    Press coverage: The Counter PatientEngagementHIT

  31. How Self-declared Throwaway Accounts Enable Parenting Disclosure and Support on Reddit.

    T. Ammari, S. Schoenebeck, and D.M. Romero.

    Proc. 22nd ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), 2019.

  32. Participation of New Editors After Times of Shock on Wikipedia.

    F. Zhang, R. Wang, E. Blohm, C. Budak, L. Robert, and D.M. Romero.

    Proc. 13th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2019.

    Slides

  33. Towards Attack Tolerant Networks: Concurrent Multipath Routing and the Butterfly Network.

    E.L. Platt and D.M. Romero.

    PLoS ONE , 14(4), 2019.

  34. Are All Successful Communities Alike? Characterizing and Predicting the Success of Online Communities.

    T. Cunha, D. Jurgens, C. Tan, and D.M. Romero.

    Proc. of The ACM Web Conference (WWW), 2019.

    SlidesPoster

  35. Event-Driven Analysis of Crowd Dynamics in the Black Lives Matter Online Social Movement.

    H. Peng, C. Budak, and D.M. Romero.

    Proc. of The ACM Web Conference (WWW), 2019.

    SlidesPoster

  36. Social Networks under stress: Specialized Team Roles and their Communication Structure.

    D.M. Romero, B. Uzzi, and J. Kleinberg.

    ACM Transactions on the Web (TWEB) , Volume 13, Issue 1, Article 6, 2019.

  37. Network Structure, Efficiency, and Performance in WikiProjects.

    E.L. Platt and D.M. Romero.

    Proc. 12th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2018.

    Data and CodeSlides

  38. 'Bacon Bacon Bacon': Food-related Tweets and Sentiment in Metro Detroit

    V.G.V. Vydiswaran, D.M. Romero, X. Zhao, D.Yu, I. Gomez-Lopez, J.X. Lu, B. Iott, A. Baylin, P. Clarke, V. Berrocal, R. Goodspeed, and T. Veinot.

    Proc. 12th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2018.

    Press coverage: Detour Detroit

  39. Using Social Media to Assess the Community Food Store Environment: Comparing Yelp Reviews with a Direct Observation Audit Instrument for Grocery Stores.

    Y. Shen, P. Clarke, I. Gomez-Lopez, A.B. Hill, D.M. Romero, R. Goodspeed, V. J. Berrocal, V.G.V. Vydiswaran, and T. Veinot.

    Public Health Nutrition , 2018.

  40. Comparing the Data Quality of Global Positioning System Devices and Mobile Phones for Assessing Relationships Between Place, Mobility, and Health: Field Study.

    R. Goodspeed, X. Yan, J Hardy, V.G.V. Vydiswaran, V. Berrocal, P. Clarke, D.M. Romero, I. Gomez-Lopez, and T. Veinot.

    JMIR Mhealth and Uhealth , 6(8):e168, 2018.

  41. Political Tweets and Mainstream News Impact in India: A Mixed Methods Investigation into Political Outreach.

    S. Chakraborty, J. Pal, P. Chandra, and D.M. Romero.

    Proc. ACM Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies (COMPASS), 2018.

  42. Pseudonymous Parents: Comparing Parenting Roles and Identities on the Mommit and Daddit Subreddits.

    T. Ammari, S. Schoenebeck, and D.M. Romero.

    Proc. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI), 2018.

    Code

  43. User Acceptance of Location-Tracking Technologies in Health Research: Implications for Study Design and Data Quality.

    J. Hardy, T.C. Veinot, X. Yan, V.J. Berrocal, P. Clarke, R. Goodspeed, I.N. Gomez, D.M. Romero, and V.G.V. Vydiswaran.

    Journal of Biomedical Informatics , 2018.

  44. Crowd Development: The Interplay Between Crowd Evaluation and Collaborative Dynamics in Wikipedia.

    F. Zhang, D. Livneh, C. Budak, L. Robert, and D.M. Romero.

    Proc. 21st ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), 2018.

  45. The Nearly Universal Link Between the Age of Past Knowledge and Tomorrow's Breakthroughs in Science and Technology: The Hotspot.

    S. Mukherjee, D.M. Romero, B. Jones and B. Uzzi.

    Science Advances , 3, e1601315, 2017.

    Press coverage: CS Monitor

  46. Shocking the Crowd: The Effect of Censorship Shocks on Chinese Wikipedia.

    F. Zhang, D. Livneh, C. Budak, L. Robert, and D.M. Romero.

    Proc. 11th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2017.

    Slides

  47. The Role of Optimal Distinctiveness and Homophily in Online Dating.

    D. Maldeniya, A. Varghese, T. Stuart, and D.M. Romero.

    Proc. 11th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2017.

    SlidesPoster

  48. Using Social Media to Identify Sources of Healthy Food in Urban Neighborhoods.

    I.N. Gomez-Lopez, P. Clarke, A.B. Hill, D.M. Romero, R. Goodspeed, V.J. Berrocal, V.G.V. Vydiswaran, and T.C. Veinot.

    Journal of Urban Health , 2017.

  49. The Influence of Early Respondents: Information Cascade Effects in Online Event Scheduling.

    D.M. Romero, K. Reinecke, and L. Robert.

    Proc. 10th ACM Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM), 2017.

    SlidesPoster

  50. Social Networks Under Stress.

    D.M. Romero, B. Uzzi, and J. Kleinberg.

    Proc. 25th ACM International World Wide Web Conference (WWW), 2016. ( Best Paper Award )

    Best Paper AwardSlides

  51. The Influence of Diversity and Experience on the Effects of Crowd Size.

    L. Robert and D.M. Romero.

    Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), 2016.

  52. Mimicry Is Presidential: Linguistic Style Matching in Presidential Debates and Improved Polling Numbers.

    D.M. Romero, R. Swaab, B. Uzzi, and A. Galinsky.

    Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin , Vol. 41(10) 1311-1319, 2015.

    Video
    Press coverage: Fortune Pacific Standard The Boston Globe New York Magazine

  53. Coordination and Efficiency in Decentralized Collaboration.

    D.M. Romero, D. Huttenlocher, and J. Kleinberg.

    Proc. 9th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2015.

    Slides

  54. Crowd Size, Diversity and Performance.

    L. Robert and D.M. Romero

    Proc. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI), 2015.

    Slides

  55. Critical Transitions in Social Network Activity.

    C. Kuehn, E.A. Martens, and D.M. Romero.

    Journal of Complex Networks , 2(2), 141-152, 2014.

    Summary in Oxford University Press's Blog

  56. Estimating the Relative Utility of Networks for Predicting User Activities.

    N. Mishra, D.M. Romero, and P. Tsaparas.

    Proc. 22th ACM International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), 2013.

    Slides

  57. On the Interplay between Social and Topical Structure.

    D.M. Romero, C. Tan, and J. Ugander.

    Proc. 7th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2013.

    Slides

  58. Differences in the Mechanics of Information Diffusion Across Topics: Idioms, Political Hashtags, and Complex Contagion on Twitter.

    D.M. Romero, B. Meeder, and J. Kleinberg.

    Proc. 20th ACM International World Wide Web Conference (WWW), 2011.

    SlidesList of hashtags with categories
    Press coverage: New York Times CBS News

  59. Influence and Passivity in Social Media.

    D.M. Romero, W. Galuba, S. Asur, and B.A. Huberman

    Proc. European Conference on Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECML PKDD), 2011. ( Test of Time Award )

    Test of Time AwardSlides
    Press coverage: New Scientist The Economist BBC MIT Tech Review CNet Mashable

  60. Predicting Reciprocity in Social Networks.

    J. Cheng, D.M. Romero, B. Meeder, and J. Kleinberg.

    Proc. 3rd IEEE Conference on Social Computing (SocialCom), 2011.

  61. Maintaining Ties on Social Media Sites: The Competing Effects of Balance, Exchange, and Betweenness.

    D.M. Romero, B. Meeder, V. Barash, and J. Kleinberg

    Proc. 5th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2011.

  62. Who Should I Follow? Recommending People in Directed Social Networks.

    M.J. Brzozowski and D.M. Romero

    Proc. 5th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2011.

  63. An Epidemiological Approach to the Spread of Political Third Parties.

    D.M. Romero, C. Kribs-Zaleta, A. Mubayi, and C. Orbe

    Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems - B , 15, 707-738, 2011.

  64. The Directed Closure Process in Hybrid Social-Information Networks, with an Analysis of Link Formation on Twitter.

    D.M. Romero and J. Kleinberg,

    Proc. 4th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), 2010.

    Slides

  65. Detecting spam in a Twitter network.

    S. Yardi, D.M. Romero, G. Schoenebeck, and d. boyd,

    First Monday , Volume 15, Number 1, 2010.

  66. Social Networks that Matter: Twitter Under the Microscope.

    B.A. Huberman, D.M. Romero, and F. Wu,

    First Monday , Volume 14, Number 1, 2009.

    Press coverage: Wall Street Journal

  67. Crowdsourcing, Attention and Productivity.

    B.A. Huberman, D.M. Romero, and F. Wu,

    Journal of Information Sciences , Volume 35, Number 6, pp. 758-765, 2009.

    Slides
    Press coverage: New Scientist

Students & postdocs

Current students

Abeer Alessa (PhD Student)
Aparna Ananthasubramaniam (PhD Candidate)
David Gamba (PhD Candidate)

Alumni

PhD & Postdoctoral

Dr. Yulin Yu (PhD, 2025)
Dr. Minje Choi (PhD, 2023)
Dr. Danaja Maldeniya (PhD, 2023)
Dr. Chris Quarles (PhD, 2023)
Dr. Hao Peng (PhD, 2022)
Dr. Ed Platt (PhD, 2022)
Anders Giovanni Møller (Visiting PhD)
Dr. Abraham Israeli (Postdoctoral Fellow)
Dr. Tiago Cunha (Postdoctoral Fellow)
Dr. Patrick Park (MIDAS Fellow)
Dr. Iris Gomez-Lopez (Postdoctoral Fellow)

MS

Sidney Xiang (MS)
Louise Zhu (MS)
Amanda Hardy (MS)
Yulin Yu (MS)
Yin Yin (MS)
Arushi Jain (MS)
Stella Seonghwa Choi (MS)
Karthik Ramanathan (MS)
Arun Varghese (MS)
Ruihan Wang (MS)
Muhan Yuan (MS)

Undergraduate

Xingyao Wang (Undergraduate)
Xingyu Lu (Undergraduate)
Ziyang Ji (Undergraduate)
Jiaxin Ye (Undergraduate)
Eric Blohm (Undergraduate)
Danielle Livneh (Undergraduate)

Professional service

Editorial roles

Program committees

Most years
  • The ACM Web Conference (WWW)
  • The International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM)
  • The ACM Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM)
  • The ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW)

Teaching

University of Michigan — School of Information

University of Michigan — Center for the Study of Complex Systems

Coursera

Ithaca College — Mathematics Department

  • Business StatisticsSpring 2012
  • Applied Calculus IFall 2011
  • Calculus IISpring 2011

Auburn Correctional Facility — CPEP

  • High School Algebra IFall 2009, Fall 2010
  • High School Algebra IISpring 2010
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