In my book on Twitter (the first academic book on the subject), I make the argument that social media  such as Twitter can serve as a ‘public sphere’ where major public debates as well as quite intimate issues (like a cancer diagnosis or intimate partner violence (IPV)) can be discussed. Social media platforms can also change minds. Perhaps the easiest...

As of July 2020, TikTok has about 80-100 million users in the US as reports do vary on this. TikTok users are also ‘growing up’ according to Adweek as older American users have started using the platform. According to AdWeek, the percentage of U.S.-based TikTok users age 18-24 fell from 41.1% in January to 35.3% in April. During that same time, the...

I think that Twitter’s announced change to enable users to hide replies to tweets will likely allow users to have more control over their conversations on Twitter. In my research, I have seen far right groups post racial hate as replies to tweets of users from racial and ethnic minority groups. Allowing hide and mute functions could provide these types...

As digital technologies become more pervasive in our everyday lives, some individuals, communities, and groups are taking active measures towards digital silence. The argument of information overloading has been particularly charged in terms of debates around youth, which has sometimes led to moral panics around the topic. Social media platforms are,...

I recently got asked whether videos of everyday racism posted on social media be seen as a form of activism. From my perspective, the recording of videos by non-celebrities of everyday racism is definitely a form of activism as it allows individuals who may have not had networks or the means to express or convey experiences of everyday racism to large...

The question of enhancing diversity in big data and computational social science is fundamentally important. I think the importance of diversity in computational areas is often ignored and, as scholars, this is at our peril. First of all, we often have biases in how we interpret data. Specifically, bias due to particular subject positions (e.g. a researcher’s...