At the Center for Internet and Society, I studied privacy in an age of interconnected information technologies. I did so by advancing information privacy theory, as well as by designing empirical studies that measure privacy attitudes and behaviors within different social settings.
For example, in one of our papers we investigated how users perceive and react to different website privacy policy link designs. In another project, we measured how information privacy attitudes relate to the introduction of digital devices in physical spaces.
dissertation research
Internet Culture and DEmocracy
In my dissertation, I critique the democratic ideals in canonical works in the field of Information Society -- a field that has defined to a great degree how we think about the role of the Internet in a democratic society.
My research highlights the inadequacies of mainstream scholarly views that equate a democratic internet with the unregulated expression of individual emotion. I show how this view undermines, in turn, our capacity to deal with campaigns of online misinformation that masquerade as just another form of emotional expression online.
The democracy that the internet can and should facilitate instead, I argue, reintroduces a boundary between private emotion and public expression, and challenges the notion that information transparency can be the solution to all our democratic worries.
journalism research
As a researcher in media and communication I have also studied how digital technologies reshape journalistic norms. I have written and presented in conferences on this issue, mainly focusing on the democratic implications of digitally-enabled collaboration and big data applications in American journalism.