PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Kristina Lerman

Kristina Lerman researches computational social science and social networks. Her 2010 study with Rumi Ghosh examined news spread on Digg and Twitter. With Xiaoran Yan and Xin-Zeng Wu she studied the majority illusion, in which network structure makes globally rare behavior look locally common. Their paper developed a statistical model and examined synthetic and real networks. AAAI elected her a Fellow in 2022. Her 2024 work on the strong friendship paradox further analyzes how network structure biases people’s observations.

Works
14

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026. Citations and h-index are hidden because this OpenAlex record may be incomplete or mix in other authors.

Photo of Kristina Lerman

Timeline

  1. 2010

    News spread in social networks

    With Rumi Ghosh, Lerman published an empirical study of news spread on Digg and Twitter in 2010. The original abstract compares how network structure and user behavior affect the spread of information. This work joins measurement of online systems with models of collective activity.

  2. 2015–2016

    The majority illusion

    With Xiaoran Yan and Xin-Zeng Wu, Lerman introduced the majority illusion in a 2015 preprint later published in PLOS ONE. The paper explains how a rare behavior can appear common in people’s local networks. It links this distortion to the friendship paradox and tests a statistical model on synthetic and real networks.

  3. 2022

    AAAI fellowship

    AAAI elected Lerman a Fellow in 2022. The recognition follows her research on information spread, collective behavior and network structure.

  4. 2024

    Strong friendship paradox research

    Lerman’s 2024 paper examines a stronger form of the friendship paradox: most of a person’s friends can have more friends than that person. It explains how higher-order network structure affects local observations and extends the issue beyond popularity. The paper connects these mechanisms with measurement and collective phenomena.

Sources and credits

Photo: isi.edu; Kristina Lerman | Information Sciences Institute; creator not stated. License: Not stated by source. Source: isi.edu. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.

  1. Lerman and Ghosh: original news-diffusion study abstract arxiv.org. Checked 13 October 2026.
  2. Lerman, Yan and Wu: original majority-illusion abstract arxiv.org. Checked 13 October 2026.
  3. Kristina Lerman: original strong-friendship-paradox abstract, 2024 arxiv.org. Checked 13 October 2026.
  4. Elected AAAI Fellows — 2022 — Kristina Lerman aaai.org. Checked 13 October 2026.