Research Areas

Sociotechnical aspects of technology use, social network analysis, user-centric design, personality and behavior.

In my dissertation I explore the way social media platforms transform how people communicate and relate to each other. The ability of constantly being connected brings about the greater accessibility of social capital contained in the crowd, however the overload of information and the structure of the user’s network may cause inequalities in the access to and use of this capital. In order to uncover the changes that occur in the societal structure due to this technological ubiquity and develop strategies of equal access to crowd capital, one needs to critically observe people’s interactions with technology using ethnographic methods. I propose that the enabler of this change lies in the postmodern paradigm that suggests that truth is contextually constructed. The aim of the current research project that I am to pursue at CSTMS is to uncover the conditions of truth for the technology context using ethnographic research methods and thus, help people develop a healthy relationship with technology.