Current Projects

Here are some collaborative projects I’m working on:

  • Since Winter 2024, I’ve been collaborating with the Stanford University Social Media Lab to research algorithmic behavior and perception. Our goal is to discern how algorithms and other content recommendation systems affect user engagement and behavior.
  • I’m also working with a team of researchers from Stanford University and UC Berkeley to investigate methods for improving online discourses. Our goal is to develop strategies that promote constructive dialogue in polarized environments.
  • And, as part of a Knight-Hennessy Scholars Kheystone Project, I’ve been working with the Stanford Literary Lab to investigate computational approaches to literary analysis. Our project examines how technology can be used to study identity in English literature.

And independently:

  • I’ve also spent the last six months conducting a historical analysis of AIDS discourses on Usenet in the early 1980s. I began this project in a media history course in Winter 2024 and expanded it in a Spring 2024 social networks course, where I began to specifically investigate the impact of influential authors on community dynamics and evolution.
    • As part of this project, I built a simple script that scrapes metadata from the GoogleGroups Usenet Archive, allowing researchers to easily bulk college newsgroup threads and comments. You can find a public version of the code here.
  • I’ve also been working to investigate theoretical models of social interaction, focusing specifically on the application of scientific and technological principles to human behavior.

Idea Dump

Here are some questions I’ve been thinking about, but haven’t gotten around to investigating:

  • How does the fragmentation of social media platforms and the diverse behaviors users exhibit across them affect their self-concept? Does it lead to a fragmented sense of self or does it foster a more nuanced and multifaceted identity?
  • How are social media users’ self-concepts impacted by their most frequent form of shared content, particularly in relation to permanent content versus ephemeral content?
  • How does the rapid propagation of fictitious pop culture phenomena such as Listenbourg, Goncharov, and Zepotha through social media platforms impact user trust and wellbeing, and what does it suggest about collective action and memory in digital memetic culture?
  • Why is the wikipedia page for internet culture such a mess??