Postdoctoral Associate
Interaction Design Lab
Communication Department
Information Science
Cornell University
I conduct Critical Research in Information Technology. I use the term "critical" here in the following three senses:
- My work lies at the intersection of computational and information technologies with critical social issues, such as political uses of social media or using information technology to promote environmental sustainability.
- Many of my projects seek to foster critical thinking, exploring how computational technologies can provoke users into approaching familiar situations from different, novel perspectives.
- Much of my research takes a critical perspective, examining fundamental assumptions underlying work on computational and information technologies, and rethinking the role of these technologies in our daily lives.
With this approach, I strive both to make significant intellectual contributions to the study of information technologies, and to impact more broadly people's everyday experiences with these technologies. This work lies where computer and information sciences intersect with the social sciences, in areas such as social computing, human-computer interaction, and new media & society.
For example, my current work is on understanding how computational analyses can mediate or improve online political deliberation. My dissertation involved the development of computation metaphor identification (CMI), a technique for identifying potential conceptual metaphors in written text, and the application of this technique to classroom science education to promote critical thinking and creativity. Another, project, metaViz applied CMI to political blogs, again with the goal of encouraging critical thinking about potential metaphors in those blogs.
I have also conducted a number of studies related to readership in social media, including studies of blog readers (i.e., people who read blogs, as opposed to tools such as RSS readers), and a study examining the activities of following on Twitter. Lastly, I have done research critically examining the theoretical underpinnings of HCI and some of the fundamental assumptions that drive information technology research.
Please see Research or Publications for more details about these and other projects.
News and Updates
Last month, I presented a paper at CHI titled When the Implication Is Not to Design (Technology). This paper was intended primarily to facilitate a conversation, so my co-author and I are organizing a discussion on the sustainable-chi mailing list. We'd like to invite you to join the discussion. Below is a copy of the post starting the discussion.
As if the CHI papers weren't enough, I recently received more good news. A paper I wrote with Mark Sueyoshi (who was at the time an undergrad researcher at UCI) and Bill Tomlinson (at the time my graduate advisor) has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Details follow below.
Earlier this week, HCI researchers around the world checked their email with bated as notifications for CHI papers were sent out. I'm pleased to say that I have three papers that were accepted this year. See full details below.
