About

I'm a postdoctoral scholar at Northwestern University, working on the Generative AI in the Newsroom Initiative. I'm also an incoming assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. I've worked at the New York Times, Meta, and Patreon. I earned my PhD at Northwestern University, where I was part of the Computational Journalism Lab.

My research centers on understanding the dynamics of collective attention in complex digital ecosystems. I use computational methods, data science, and network analysis to study how people discover information online, why things get popular, and what influences content creators. My first love is journalism, but I also study large social platforms such as TikTok, Reddit, and Facebook along with other attention markets like Netflix and Substack.

My work focuses on four main areas:

• AI in Journalism & Media — How artificial intelligence reshapes newsroom workflows, editorial judgment, and audience relationships.
• Information Discovery & Virality — Why certain stories surface, how they spread across platforms, and what pulls collective focus.
• Platform Dynamics — The structures, incentives, and politics of the attention markets that route news and culture.
• Computational Methods for Social Science — New datasets and tooling for studying media, algorithms, and online publics at scale.

Before grad school, I worked in audience development and analytics at Fusion Media Group, Digiday, Pacific Standard, and the Dallas Morning News. I've written for Pacific Standard, the Christian Science Monitor, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and others. I graduated from the Medill School of Journalism and am originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana.