The internet, and social media in particular, have made individual and institutional discourse visible like never before.  Yet the production of discourse — what leads individuals or institutions to speak up, whom do they address, what do they say — is not yet well understood.  My research focuses on understanding these dynamics through the quantitative aggregation of collective communication behavior.  In particular, my approach emphasizes the role that accountability, credibility, and legitimacy within social networks plays in determining how individuals and institutions produce discourse on a large scale.

My research focuses on individual motivations and their impacts on collective behaviors, especially in online communities. I am particularly interested in how inconspicuous individual motives can lead to unintended behaviors when aggregated, and the collective “tipping” processes that are involved in these consequences. I use a wide variety of quantitative methods such as quasi-experiment, survival analysis, topic modeling, and agent-based modeling in my work..

Salma El Idrissi is a Ph.D. student at Cornell. Salma focuses on political communication and comparative media research. Her current areas of interest include populism and the media and cross-national media culture (and history).

Yunyun is a senior pursuing a joint degree in ISST engineering and Government (A&S). She’s passionate about UX design, digital literacy, and the future of privacy law.  Yunyun Is also an avid podcaster and enjoys all things science communication related.

Sebastian is a sophomore majoring in computer science.  He is interested in data science and the use of data to understand human behavior and natural processes, artificial intelligence and natural language processing.