Research Projects

AGGRESSION AND THREAT RHETORIC TARGETING MUSLIMS AND THE LGBT COMMUNITY ON SOCIAL MEDIA IN FINLAND

  • Detecting far right groups on social media
  • Comparing the content of posts targeting Muslims and LGBT community in terms of hate speech/violent threat context
  • Timeline analysis of social media posts with actual hate crimes in Finland
  • The impact of media on hate speech discussions on social media platforms
  • Funded by Nordic Research Council for Criminology 

CRITICAL AI AND CRISIS INTERROGATIVES

  • Online user networks, community detection, activism during crisis and fake news spread during crisis. I utilize social network models to study online networks and apply NLP models to extract content for other tasks.

RECONSTRUCTING CRISIS NARRATIVES FOR TRUSTWORTHY COMMUNICATION AND COOPERATIVE AGENCY

  • Text analysis of THL’s Facebook and Twitter posts (including users’ comments) during COVID 19 pandemic, targeting organizational performance, crisis communication and trust based on Topic Modeling and text classification NLP models
  • Academy of Finland funded project – Collaborative research project between Aalto University and Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL)

STRENGTHENING PREPAREDNESS OF DRUG INFORMATION SYSTEMS AND DRUG POLICY CAPACITIES TO RESPOND TO EMERGING DRUG TRENDS AND CHALLENGES (DRUG-PREP)

  • EU Project with six countries
  • Identify and assess current needs and responses to emerging drug problems in European countries
  • Strengthen capacity building of national surveillance systems on preparedness
  • Research is based on foresight analysis framework
  • Training experts and decision-makers in EU countries via PLATO online training platform
  • European Commission Funded Project – JUST-DRUGS-AG. 

THE CHALLENGES OF ESTABLISHING DRUG CONSUMPTION ROOMS (DCR) IN HELSINKI AND AN EVIDENCE-BASED POLICY DESIGN

  • Qualitative research, based on inter-sectoral interviews
  • Analysis of the policy environment, policy process and problematization of drug issue.
  • Funden by KONE Foundation

  CRISIS MANAGEMENT, TRUST AND LEGITIMACY IN EXTREME EVENTS: IMMIGRANT FLOWS

  • Semi-structured face-to-face deep interviews with Syrian refugees, government officials and service providers.

WHOLESALE AND STREET-LEVEL DRUG PRICE DATA ACROSS TURKEY

  • Created a national “Retail and Wholesale Drug Price” data collection system for Turkey
  • Results are used for reporting to the agencies including the Turkish National Police, the EU drugs agency (EMCDDA) and The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB)

YOUTH SURVEYS IN ISTANBUL

  • Conducted the largest youth survey in Turkey (on a sample of 32,000 students) about substance use, crime, violence, social and institutional settings.
  • Continued with sub-surveys (10,000 students) annually in provinces of Istanbul through 2013