About Me

Academic Bio

I’m Dr. James Ashford, and I’m a Research Associate at Cardiff University with an interest in understanding how people use social media though techniques such as social network analysis. I have a PhD in Computer Science from Cardiff University, in which I produced a thesis titled “A network science framework for detecting disruptive behaviour on social media”

I enjoy scraping, analysing and visualising data and social networks. In my free time, I like to explore the outdoors, mountain climbing, cycling, running and attending church. I think of myself as an all-round nerd.

Research Interests

My research interests include, but not limited to, the following:

• Social Network Analysis
• Social Media Usage
• Cyber Security
• Data Science
• Data Visualisation
• Mis/Disinformation
• Machine Learning
• Python Programming
• Data Structures and Algorithms

Personal Bio

See my other website for more.

Personal Interests

I have a broad range of interests / hobbies. I also enjoy learning new skills. A few of interests includes:

• Reading
• The Bible, Christian / Theological
• Productivity
• A bit of fiction
• Writing
• Spending time outdoors
• Cycling and running
• Cooking
• Card tricks
• Learning new skills

Publications

2024

• Ashford, James. “Detecting Anti-vaccine Content on Twitter using Multiple Message-Based Network Representations”, arXiv preprint

2022

• C, McMillan, et al. “Reciprocity, transitivity, and skew: Comparing local structure in 40 positive and negative social networks”, Plos one 17 (5), e0267886
• Ashford, James, et al. “Understanding the characteristics of COVID-19 misinformation communities through graphlet analysis”, Online Social Networks and Media 27, 100178

2021

• C, Davies, et al. “Multi-scale user migration on Reddit”, AAAI

2020

• Ashford, James, et al. “Assessing temporal and spatial features in detecting disruptive users on Reddit” 2020 International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, & Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation

2019

• Lee, Eunjin, et al. “An Exploratory Analysis of Suspicious Reddit User Accounts based on Sentiment and Interactions.”
• Ashford, James, et al. “Understanding the Signature of Controversial Wikipedia Articles through Motifs in Editor Revision Networks.” Companion Proceedings of The 2019 World Wide Web Conference. ACM, 2019.