Dissertation Research
Over the last few years, there has been a growing public fascination with 'social media' and its role in modern society. At the heart of this fascination is the ability for users to create and share content via a variety of platforms such as blogs, micro-blogs, collaborative wikis, multimedia sharing sites, social networking sites etc. My dissertation research focuses on the analysis of various aspects of user-generated content that are central to understanding inter-personal communication on social media. The objective of my work is to bring structure and organization to unstructured chatter on social media centered around the following questions:
- What are people talking about: What are the Named Entities and topics that people are making references to? How are cultures interpreting any situation in local contexts and supporting them in their variable observations on a social medium?
- How are they expressing themselves: What do word usages tell us about an active population or about individual allegiances or non-conformity to group practices?
- Why do they scribe: What are the diverse intentions that produce the diverse content on social media? Can we understand why we share by looking at what we predominantly do with the medium? What emotions are people sharing about something?
Research Statement
A one-page summary of my dissertation research can be found here.
A detail research statement covering past work and immediate research plans can be found here.