About Me

Dr Sam Martin

I am an experienced Digital Sociologist and Methodologist with over 10 years of expertise in using creative digital methods to analyze Big Social Data in the fields of digital epidemiology and digital public and global health. I have worked as a Digital Analytics consultant at the Oxford Vaccine Group and Ethox Centre, where I used creative Big Qualitative methods and Generative AI to investigate social media representations of Vaccine Hesitancy, Misinformation and Disinformation.

I am also a Senior Research Fellow and PPIE Lead at the Vaccines and Society Unit, and the Oxford Vaccine Group.
At University College London's RREAL (Rapid Research And Evaluation Lab), where I led the Big Qualitative Data workstream. In this role, I utilised Big Qual methods and Generative AI to conduct rapid qualitative research into the mental health of Healthcare workers during the Covid-19 pandemic, UK Public Healthcare delivery and Patient Safety, and investigate the impact of complex health emergencies. Previously, I worked as the Digital Analytics Lead at the Vaccine Confidence Project (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine), where I used machine learning and sentiment analysis to research the nuances of sentiment in vaccine confidence discourse across the global diaspora.

My work has been published in academic journals and featured at international conferences for the WHO and UNICEF, as well as on the BBC documentary "Conspiracy Files: Vaccine Wars."

Selected publications

  • Big Qual Analysis of Vaccine Hesitancy re. maternal and Covid-19 vaccines - including sentiment and stance analytics.

    • “Any idea how fast ‘It’s just a mask!’ can turn into ‘It’s just a vaccine!’”: From mask mandates to vaccine mandates during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sam Martin, Samantha Vanderslott. Vaccine, 2021, ISSN 0264-410X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2021.10.031

    • Categorizing Vaccine Confidence With a Transformer-Based Machine Learning Model: Analysis of Nuances of Vaccine Sentiment in Twitter Discourse. Kummervold PE, Martin S, Dada S, Kilich E, Denny C, Paterson P, Larson HJ. https://doi.org/10.2196/29584

    • “Vaccines for pregnant women…?! Absurd” – Mapping maternal vaccination discourse and stance on social media over six months (Vaccine). Martin, S., Kilich, E., Dada, S., Kummervold Egil, P., Denny, C., Patterson, P., Larson, HJ. (2020) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2020.07.072

    • Methods for Social Media Monitoring Related to Vaccination: Systematic Scoping Review. Karafillakis E, Martin S, Simas C, Olsson K, Takacs J, Dada S, Larson HJ. https://doi.org/10.2196/17149

  • Big Qual Analysis of the Long Covid experiences of adults and children:

    • “#LongCOVID affects children too”: A Twitter analysis of healthcare workers’ sentiment and discourse about Long COVID in children and young people in the UK. Sam Martin; Macarena Chepo; Noémie Déom; Ahmad Firas Khalid; Cecilia Vindrola-Padros. https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.07.20.22277865

    • Long Covid: Online patient narratives, public health communication and vaccine hesitancy. Esperanza Miyake, Sam Martin. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F20552076211059649

  • Global public health and misinformation:

  • Applying Big Qualitative Methods to Analyse Anaesthetists’ Experiences of Peri- operative Cardiac Arrest: Insights from the 7th National Audit Project (NAP7)
    Anaesthesia, In Review
    Sam Martin Emma Beecham Emira Kursumovic Richard Armstrong Tim Cook Andrew Kane Jasmeet Soar Cecilia Vindrola

    Methods of the 7th National Audit Project (NAP7) of the Royal College of Anaesthetists: peri‐operative cardiac arrest.
    Anaesthesia, 77(12), pp.1376-1385.
    A. D. Kane, R. A. Armstrong, E. Kursumovic, T. M. Cook, F. C. Oglesby, L. Cortes, I. K. Moppett, S. R. Moonesinghe, S. Agarwal, D. C. Bouch, J. Cordingley, M. T. Davies, J. Dorey, S. J. Finney, G. Kunst, D. N. Lucas, G. Nickols, R. Mouton, J. P. Nolan, B. Patel, V. J. Pappachan, F. Plaat, K. Samuel, B. R. Scholefield, J. H. Smith, L. Varney, C. Vindrola-Padros, S. Martin, E. C. Wain, S. W. Kendall, S. Ward, S. Drake, J. Lourtie, C. Taylor, J. Soar
    https://doi.org/10.1111/anae.15856

  • Big Qual Data analysis of the shared experiences of Health Care Workers during the Covid-19 pandemic:

    • Healthcare workers’ mental health and wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic: Longitudinal analysis of interview and social media data. San Juan, N.V., Martin, S., Badley, A., Maio, L., Gronholm, P., Buck, C., Flores, E., Vanderslott, S., Syversen, A., Symmons, S.M. and Uddin, I. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.29.22274481v2

    • Re-ordering connections: UK healthcare workers' experiences of emotion management during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dowrick, A., Mitchinson, L., Hoernke, K., Mulachy Symmons, S., Cooper, S., Martin, S., Vanderslott, S., Vera San Juan, N., & Vindrola-Padros, C.  Sociology of Health & Illness. 2021; 00: 1– 22. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.13390

    • Cross-Country Comparison of Public Awareness, Rumors, and Behavioral Responses to the COVID-19 Epidemic: Infodemiology Study. Hou Z, Du F, Zhou X, Jiang H, Martin S, Larson H, Lin L. https://doi.org/10.2196%2F21143

  • Using digital methods to understand loopholes re. data privacy and the complexity of opting out of data sharing on smartphone devices:

  • Patients’ Experiences of a Sarcoma Diagnosis: A Process Mapping Exercise of Diagnostic Pathways. Cancers. 2023; 15(15):3946. Martin S, Clark SE, Gerrand C, Gilchrist K, Lawal M, Maio L, Martins A, Storey L, Taylor RM, Wells M, et al.
    https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers15153946

Qualifications

  • P.h.D. Interdisciplinary Studies: Digital Sociology and Digital Health. University of Warwick. Thesis Title: Coeliac Disease: Chronic Illness and Self-Care in the Digital Age 

  • MSc. Digital Sociology, (Distinction, and Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement). Goldsmiths, University of London

  • MA Jurisprudence (Law) – Oxford University, Merton College

  • LLB Jurisprudence (Law) – Oxford University, Merton College

Relevant Career details

  • 2020 – Current: Senior Research Fellow, University College London: Rapid Research, Evaluation and Appraisal Lab (RREAL)
    I collaborate with an international team of academics in one of several work-streams focused on utilising Big Qualitative Analysis and AI methods in both quantitative and qualitative analysis of Covid-19 data shared on social media by Health Care Workers (HCWs) re. their experience of working on the frontline. I also run Doctoral Training Centre workshops and short courses in Advanced Digital and Generative AI Methods for Graduate students, teaching creative research methods using data mining, text and discourse analysis, and data visualisation.

  • 2020 – Current: Digital Analytics Consultant, Ethox Centre, Big Data Institute, Oxford University
    Collaborates with an international team on analysis of Covid-19 data shared on social media by Health Care Workers (HCWs) re. vaccine hesitancy, Misinformation, Disinformation and Revelatory Fakes.

  • 2019 – 2020: Research Fellow (Digital Analytics Lead), at the Vaccine Confidence Project, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

    Discourse and Sentiment Analytics of Vaccine Hesitancy towards Maternal Vaccines:
    Co-developed and refine Boolean queries, sentiment analysis,machine learning and data visualisation re. social listening focused on anti-vax discourse on social media and digital media

  • 2018: Senior Research Assistant: Manchester Metropolitan University
    “Opting out of Digital Health”: Digital analytics and data monitoring into the ability of users to opt out of using Digital Health Apps that are sponsored by the NHS or independent backers, and apply a range of cultural and social theories (such as those on digital society and culture, digital health, and politics of bio data) to the analysis of collected data.

  • 2018: Visiting Lecturer in Advanced Digital Methods, University of Warwick Running Doctoral Training Centre workshops in Advanced Digital Methods for Graduate students, on web scraping, data visualisation with Gephi, and creative research techniques.

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