Research

My dissertation examines how appearance norms can amplify digital inequalities, investigating how appearance-linked inequalities interact with surveillance and pushback, legitimation and belonging, and the leveraging of credentials and authority signals across digital platforms.

My master’s thesis employed qualitative and computational methods to investigate the factors allowing misogynist involuntary celibates (incels) on Reddit to identify with the openly self-derogating incel community. Using thematic qualitative analysis to compare Reddit posts from misogynist incel subreddits to posts from r/MGTOW, a subreddit catering to the male separatist Men Going Their Own Way community, I found that misogynist incels and male separatists alike evaluated men as a broader ingroup more positively than women as a broader outgroup. Misogynist incels struck a patriarchal bargain, voluntarily positioning themselves at the bottom of a masculine hierarchy to enjoy some, if not all, of the benefits inherent in perpetuating a patriarchal social structure. You can check out published work from my master’s thesis in Social Psychology Quarterly.

Through UNC-Chapel Hill’s Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP), I worked with Associate Professor of Communication Alice Marwick on the Carnegie Foundation-funded Redpills and Radicalization project. The project employs qualitative and ethnographic methods to critically investigate online far-right radicalization. We apply the sociotechnical theory of media effects to posts and conversations from Reddit, Gab, and Discord far-right communities, showcasing the central theme of evidence presentation and evaluation in community participants’ justifications of prejudicial and hateful beliefs, in a forthcoming paper accepted to the International Journal of Communication. A comprehensive literature review examining online far-right radicalization in connection to this project is also available for download through CITAP’s Bulletin of Information Technology and Public Life.