Research

I use qualitative and mixed methods to understand how online rhetoric, norms, and behavior impact the ways we navigate digital spaces. My work has been published in sociological outlets, including Social Psychology Quarterly, Qualitative Sociology, Sociological Forum, Socius, and The Sociological Quarterly; and in interdisciplinary outlets, including Social Media + Society, Social Science & Medicine – Qualitative Research in Health, the International Journal of Communication, and the Journal of Information Technology & Politics.

Social Media, Access, and Inequality

Much of my research investigates how social norms linked to appearance, culture, and other facets of identity shape stratification, access, and inequality online.

• My dissertation examined how online communities and content creators challenge and re-entrench norms of appearance on social media, and how consumption of appearance-centric social media content shapes patterns of offline inequality. An article from my dissertation published in Qualitative Sociology employs interviews with students attending a public flagship university in the Southern United States to understand how the centrality of image-centric social media platforms differentially fosters sensed validity and belonging across social location and gender. I find that students’ proximity to or distance from hegemonic cultural norms influenced their encounters with felt stigma in digital spaces. Women students additionally felt greater pressure to document their lives via image-centric platforms. These patterns hold important implications for the equitable potential of both higher education and social media platforms, particularly as these two institutions become increasingly intertwined.

• A sole-authored article published in Sociological Forum addresses a gap in sociological research by considering how technological affordances, alongside broader social contexts, can shape how dominant appearance norms are opposed, complicated, or reproduced. Examining conversations on the subreddit r/instagramreality, I reveal how Reddit’s afforded anonymity paradoxically allows r/instagramreality members to challenge constraining beauty standards while also facilitating conversations upholding norms that privilege dominant groups.

• An article coauthored with undergraduate student collaborators and published in Social Science & Medicine – Qualitative Research in Health investigates how plastic surgeons, cosmetic dentists, dermatologists, and other content creators on the video-sharing platform TikTok portray themselves and beauty interventions to their audiences. Analyzing short-form videos produced by content creators holding a spectrum of higher- and lower-status occupational credentials, we find creators frame themselves as relatable, fostering parasocial, or perceived-intimate, relationships with viewers. Simultaneously, men creators holding higher-status credentials employ paternalist logics in their content, asserting their authority over potential clients’ paths to beauty and adjudicating who takes beauty interventions “too far.” We extend on prior work examining the complicated relationship between empowerment and subjugation in the pursuit of beauty interventions, revealing how social media add a new dimension to this complex relationship.

• An ongoing cross-institutional collaboration investigates the mechanisms sustaining Americans’ continued belief in a meritocratic economy through qualitative content analysis of YouTubers discussing time management and productivity. Our preliminary findings indicate that productivity YouTubers portray upward mobility as something universally achievable yet rarely achieved. We illustrate how emerging media environments frame mobility as both accessible and extraordinary, revealing how the public comes to perceive unequal outcomes as just.

Online Hate and Digital Inequality

A second strand of my research examines how online hate and mis- and disinformation influence inequality.

• A sole-authored article in Social Psychology Quarterly bridges theories from social psychology and the sociology of sex and gender to investigate factors allowing misogynist involuntary celibates (incels) to identify with the openly self-derogating incel community. I find misogynist incels strike a patriarchal bargain, positioning themselves at the bottom of a masculine hierarchy, but over women, to enjoy some benefits of a patriarchal society.

• In the Carnegie Foundation-funded Redpills and Radicalization project, my coauthor and I qualitatively and ethnographically investigate the mechanisms fueling online far-right radicalization. A peer-reviewed article from this collaboration examines the role of evidence in justifying hateful online beliefs. Analyzing “redpilling narratives” from Reddit, Gab, and Discord far-right online communities, we find these communities present overwhelming amounts of far-right disinformation framed as supposedly rational, logical, and “scientific” to justify otherwise indefensible ideologies. A comprehensive literature review problematizes a tendency for post-9/11 scholarship to emphasize the “other” when defining extremism and radicalization.

• Another collaboration examines how unequal value toward different modes of knowledge production operates in conspiratorial TikTok communities. Our first paper, published in Social Media + Society, investigates who produces conspiratorial TikTok content and how this content relates to identity and knowledge production. We find community members promote welcoming environments where audiences participate in research and uncover “hidden knowledge,” connecting otherwise incompatible communities and revealing the everyday nature of online conspiracies. Our second paper, published in the Journal of Information Technology & Politics, focuses on ConspiracyTok commenters. These commenters frequently extend and endorse content creators’ claims and develop supplementary narratives rather than discredit creators.

• A second ongoing cross-institutional collaboration examines how commentary YouTubers debating the contentious rise of “trad wife” influencers resonate and diverge from previous debates surrounding “choice feminism.” Our preliminary findings indicate that even while pushing back against the heteropatriarchal, Eurocentric, and right-wing-aligned aspects of much “trad wife” content, narratives of individual choice serve as implicit justifications, defanging commentary YouTubers’ critiques.