About me

I am a PhD candidate in Network Science at Northeastern University. My current work focuses on the ways that structure and agency interact in social networks to bring about collective behavior. I’m also interested in making big data and computational tools usable by academics without specialized technical training. I use mixed methods, ranging from terabyte-scale datasets to autoethnography, to make sense of the world.

My dissertation work

The power of a network of individuals united by a common purpose is strictly greater than the sum of the power of its constituent individuals. This phenomenon, known as emergence, is a common occurrence in complex systems like the various information ecosystems studied in this dissertation. Understanding how power operates in information ecosystems requires us to move past the question of structure versus agency and instead think about emergent power: how do networks of individual actors exert power collectively in an emergent fashion? This dissertation works to reconcile structure and agency, in the specific setting of information ecosystems on social media, by characterizing the emergent patterns of power that result from the collective agency of networked individuals. It does so by examining three manifestations of emergent, collective power in information ecosystems at varying scales, using methods that range from large-scale causal inference to constructivist grounded theory. Each chapter examines a different network, where power might manifest as the ability to expel someone from a community, alter followers’ information intake over time, or change patterns of civic discourse. I demonstrate that power operates collectively and emergently, regardless of the specific setting.