Mark Aakhus is a Professor in the Department of Communication and the Associate Dean for Research at SC&I. His research investigates the relationship between communication and design to understand the uses of technological and organizational design intended to augment human interaction and reasoning for decision-making and conflict-management. This involves multiple methods from discourse analysis and computational social science to examine language, argumentation, and social interaction in professional practice, organizational processes, and information infrastructures.

Jabari Evans is an Assistant Professor of Race and Media at the University of South Carolina. He earned his Ph.D. in the Media, Technology, and Society program at Northwestern University and worked under the direction of Dr. Ellen Wartella in the Center on Media and Human Development. He received his B.A. in Communication and Culture with a minor in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania and then went on to earn his MSW from the University of Southern California’s School of Social Work. Prior to Northwestern, Jabari enjoyed a decorated career as a hip hop songwriter and producer performing under the moniker of “Naledge” in the Chicago rap group Kidz in the Hall. Jabari’s research focuses on the music sub-cultures that urban adolescents of color develop and inhabit, collectively and individually, to learn about and understand their social environments, emotional development and professional aspirations. His forthcoming dissertation project, which centers on a Hip-Hop Education program in Chicago Public Schools, has been recognized for awards by the International Communication Association and has been covered by the Chicago Reader, Chicago Tribune, Rolling Out Magazine, Ebony Magazine and Chicago Crain’s Business.

Youngrim Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University. Her research investigates how state institutions build and utilize digital technologies to manage complex governance challenges, especially in cases of imminent public health or environmental crises. She uses qualitative methods and ethnographic fieldwork to uncover how these emerging crisis-response technologies shape the ways we make sense of, and react to, moments of risk, uncertainty, and disturbance.

Will Marler is a postdoctoral research and teaching associate in the Department of Communication and Media Research (IKMZ) at the University of Zurich. He is interested in how marginalized communities adapt digital technologies to address their social and material needs. He has studied homelessness and social isolation among older adults through ethnography and survey studies.

Christoph Mergerson is an Assistant Professor in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. He is also a Ph.D. candidate (ABD) and Louis Bevier Dissertation Fellow in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. His research and teaching interests include race and news media, journalism history, and media law and policy.

Caitlin Petre is an Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies. Her work uses qualitative methods to examine the social processes, organizations, and actors behind the digital datasets and algorithms that increasingly govern the contemporary workplace. Petre’s book, All the News That’s Fit to Click (2021, Princeton University Press), is a behind-the-scenes look at how performance analytics are transforming the work of journalism, from the New York Times to Gawker Media.

Marie L. Radford is chair and professor, in the LIS Department, SC&I, Rutgers. Her latest books are Research Methods in Library and Information Science, 7th ed. with Lynn S. Connaway (2021), Conducting the Reference Interview, 3rd ed., with Catherine Ross and Kirsti Nilsen (2019), and Library Conversations: Reclaiming Interpersonal Communication Theory for Understanding Professional Encounters with Gary Radford (2017). Research focuses on qualitative methods, interpersonal communication within library contexts, virtual and traditional reference service, social media, and media stereotypes of librarians/libraries.

Yonaira (Yoni) Rivera is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and an Associate Member of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey. Her scholarship focuses on reducing health inequities and improving the well-being of Latinx and underserved communities through health communication initiatives. She uses qualitatively-driven, mixed methods and community-based participatory research to study social media health misinformation, cancer control and prevention, and disaster relief.

La-Toya Scott’s research reflects an investment in Black life past institutionalized subjectivity (that focuses primarily on Black death and pain) and expands the conversation into the next step— the cultivation of safe spaces/modern-day hush harbors for healing, transformation, and community-building—within the afterlife of slavery and modern-day technological mediums and platforms. La-Toya’s current work analyzes the internal and external responses to the construction of Black safe spaces in multiple and diverse forms (primarily finding roots in Black literature, Black film, and social media platforms). La-Toya has published articles in Supernatural Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Art, Media, and Culture, Peitho: Journal of the Coalition of Feminist Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition, and more. Raised in Florida, she uses her lived experiences from her time there, along with Black Feminist theory and practice, to draw implications for anti-racist praxis across fields and disciplines.

Silas Udenze is a doctoral grant holder of Humanities and Communication at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Barcelona, Spain. He specializes in investigating social media as a realm for interactions, especially for young people. His current project attempts to understand the digital storytelling experience of young Nigerians on three social media platforms as regards the topic of social change. Silas is a member of the Mediaccions research group at the UOC.

Veronica Armour is a learning experience designer interested in the interplay between people, information, and innovation. She is the Associate Director for the Innovation, Design, & Entrepreneurship Academy (IDEA) at Rutgers University-New Brunswick where she also teaches part-time for the Information Technology and Informatics program at the School of Communication and Information. Her research interests include knowledge building, information experience, innovation, design science, and CSCL@Work.

Holly Avella is a Ph.D. candidate at the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information researching mood, media, and mental health. Her current work focuses on therapeutic mood tracking technologies and social media mood and mental health content. Her work can be found in New Media & Society and Law and Society Review. Her book on social media mental health and therapeutic technology is under contract with the University of California Press.

Yung-Ying Chang is a third-year PhD student in Sociology at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. She is interested in consumers and consumption, political participation, nationalism, emotions, popular culture, and media and politics. Her current research explores how political consciousness, talk, and action emerge through people’s cultural consumption, such as the global consumption of K-pop, and what role emotions and online communities play in that process. The research also contextualizes the rarely examined emotional tension between people’s attachment to non-political objects and the desire for political engagement that can be found in multiple contexts.

Charles Chear is a Ph.D. student at Rutgers University School of Social Work. He studies social media use among immigrants to address family and community needs. He is interested in qualitative and natural language processing methods to do so. Hailing from Philadelphia's Cambodian refugee community, Charles worked as a social worker for several years.

Daniel Delmonaco is a third year PhD student at the University of Michigan School of Information. Daniel researches health information seeking, LGBTQ+ health, sex education, and social media content moderation. They use community-based and participatory research methods to develop inclusive health resources for LGBTQ+ young people.

Maria I. Espinoza is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at Rutgers University. Her research focuses on the communication of infectious diseases transmitted by mosquitoes and the uses of data for controlling epidemics. With Melissa Aronczyk, she's the author of A Strategic Nature: Public Relations and The Politics of American Environmentalism. This book looks at how promotional culture and information systems have shaped our understanding of environmental problems in the United States.

Dan Houli is a 4th year part-time Ph.D. student in Library and Information Science. Dan’s interests are in digital ethnographic research of online communities, particularly regarding the information behavior of online wellness communities.

Yena Lee is a Ph.D. student in the Media, Technology, and Society program at Northwestern School of Communication. She is interested in studying the emerging forms and processes of networked social movement and the technological, political, and organizational conditions that enable or challenge the rise of such movements. Her research aims to better understand the changing logics of social movement at both levels of consciousness-raising and policymaking through an interdisciplinary and comparative lens. Her most recent research published in the Information, Communication & Society journal looks at the role of leadership in feminist networked social movements in South Korea. She has previously written about feminist activist chatbot in Brazil and feminist K-pop fan activism on Twitter.

Kaitlin Montague is a 4th year PhD Candidate at Rutgers University's School of Communication and Information in the Department of Library and Information Science. Her work focuses on Human Information Behavior. She is interested in the ways that concepts of place and space intersect with the ways that mobile populations search for information in transit. Kaitlin also holds a MI in Library and Information Science from Rutgers University.

Niki Natarajan is a PhD Candidate at the School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University. Niki specializes in audience research in the context of youth technology use. Niki earned her Master’s degree in integrated marketing communications from Northwestern University, and her Bachelor’s degree in Economics. She is a British Chevening scholar, and pioneered several newsroom innovations in India and the US prior to joining the PhD program at Rutgers. Fun Fact: Niki plays and teaches tennis.

Justine Quow is currently a Ph.D. student at Rutgers University, School of Communication and Information. Justine’s passion lies in researching the utilization of communicative technology, specifically social media, to improve community health and resilience.

Zhuozhi Shao is a third-year PhD student in the department of Communication at Rutgers University. Zhouzhi’s current project is about Zoom fatigue and social presence in mixed-media relationships.

Kevin is a 4th year in the Communication, Information, and Media program with a concentration in Communication. Kevin’s area of research is in virtual reality and the induction of empathy.

Nicole E. Weber is a researcher, instructor, and librarian. She uses digital ethnographic and critical/cultural approaches to examine intersections between media, promotional culture and health and wellness. Currently, she is a PhD candidate in Media Studies at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information, and she also holds an MS in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.