Assistant Professor of Advertising + Public Relations, studying how platform affordances, social identity, and computational methods reshape political communication and the information ecosystem.
My work sits at the intersection of political communication, platform studies, and computational social science.
Understanding how the technical features and affordances of communication platforms shape the content and strategies of political campaigns. Central to this work is the Identity Driven Information Ecosystem (IDIE) framework.
Examining how algorithms and user behavior influence content exposure and engagement, including how news engagement on Facebook skews ideologically and how negativity drives public interaction with advocacy content.
Studying how political identity manifests through consumer choices and cultural signals — from music preferences and podcast selection to television viewing and visual imagery as reflections of partisan identity.
Investigating digital wellness content, science influencer polarization, environmental messaging effectiveness, and how social identity and norms shape health-related behaviors including sports gambling engagement.
Peer-reviewed journal articles. Full list and citation metrics available on Google Scholar.
Advancing research at the intersection of technology, identity, and communication.
The ASPECT Lab at Michigan State University investigates how the information we encounter, engage with, and act upon is shaped by internal psychological factors and external technological structures.
Our work draws on computational methods, large-scale data collection, survey research, and experimental design to understand modern communication ecosystems. We are particularly interested in how social identities — political, cultural, and group affiliations — systematically influence the information environments people inhabit.
We are always looking for motivated graduate students. If you're interested in political communication, computational methods, or platform studies, get in touch.
Current and former doctoral students I advise and have advised.
Courses focused on digital advertising, analytics, computational methods, and data science.
A hands-on course covering campaign management, digital metrics, platform analytics, and data-driven advertising strategy. Students work with real and simulated datasets to build practical analytical skills.
UndergraduateAn advanced course building on foundational analytics concepts, covering sophisticated measurement techniques, attribution modeling, and applied data analysis for digital advertising campaigns.
UndergraduateA graduate-level introduction to Python programming for communication researchers, covering data collection, manipulation, and analysis techniques relevant to computational social science.
GraduateAn intensive summer workshop providing hands-on training in data science methods and computational tools for graduate students and faculty across the College of Communication Arts and Sciences.
WorkshopI welcome inquiries about research collaborations, prospective graduate students, and speaking opportunities.
404 S. Wilson Rd., Room 312
Department of Advertising + Public Relations
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824