Hello. I’m a professor of political science at California Lutheran University. I specialize in studying the role that social media plays in restructuring democracy and political life. To see the books and academic articles I’ve written, follow this link. To read my essays and public talks/podcasts, follow this link. To find out what research projects I’m working on, follow this link.

To learn more about the Beneficial Tech Lab, follow this link.

I published a book entitled Facebook Democracy (Routledge Press) which looks at the role that the popular social network played on the formation of political identity across different countries. My most recent work (with CLU colleagues Richard Neve and Brian Collins) looks at they ways in which social media platforms encourage antagonistic political discourse and how they could be regulated. In addition, I (with collaborators) am using computational social science methods on a number of projects including using machine learning to predict support or opposition to fracking on Twitter, a study of how and individuals censor themselves when discussing politics on Facebook, and a project on uncovering the topic structure of Reddit comments on WallStreetBets. In 2018, I organized a mini-conference on Algorithmic Politics for the Western Political Science Association. Currently, I am working on a book that looks at the effect of the “Algorithmic Age” on political citizenship. I also write about diversity, multiculturalism and citizenship and I’m a massive US soccer fan. You can here me talk about both on a recent podcast.

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Presentations

1. “Fracking Twitter: Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing Tools for the Identification of Coalition and Causal Narratives”. With Will Cipolli and Jose Marichal. Presented at the Midwest Political Science Annual Conference. Chicago, IL. April 9, 2022.

2. Topic Modeling Trump Tweets: A Computational Grounded Theory Approach to Understanding Social Media Political Talk. Presented at the 2019 Western Political Science Association Annual Conference. San Diego, CA. April 19-22.

3. Fracking Twitter: Applying the Narrative Policy Framework to fracking debates in New York. Presented at the 2019 Midwest Political Science Association Annual Conference. Chicago, IL. April 4-7. With Andy Pattison and William Cipioli.

4. Factory Farmed Citizens: Social Media, the Public Sphere and Algorithmic Obligation. Presented at the Eight Annual International Symposium on Digital Ethics at Loyola University. Chicago, IL. November 9, 2018. With Brian Collins and Richard Neve.

5. Antagonistic Bias: Developing a Typology of Agonistic Talk on Twitter Using Gun Control Networks. Presented at the 2018 Western Political Science Assocation Annual Conference. San Francisco, CA. April 14-16. With Richard Neve.

6. The Role of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence in Democratic Life. Invited Talk at Whitman College. Walla Walla, Washington. April 23, 2018.

7. A Social network Analysis of the Resistance Twitter Ecology. Presented at the 2017 APSA Political Neworks Conference. Columbus, OH. June 14-16. With Ryan Mundy and Jack Rockwood.

8. Microactivism: Explaining the Determinants of Effective Campaigns through Social Media Ecologies. Presented at the 2015 Western Political Science Association Annual Conference. Las Vegas, NV. April 2-4.

9. Civic Hacking, Place Based Social Networks and Urban Power. Presented at the 2014 Western Political Science Assocation Annual Conference. Seattle, WA. April 17-19.

10. Roundtable: Public Intellectualism: Academics who Engage in Real-Time Politics Through New Media. Presented at the 2014 Western Political Science Assocation Annual Conference. Hollywood, CA. April 17-19.