My research interests broadly concern rhetorical theory, digital humanities, comparative media studies, and political analysis with particular expertise on the relationship between rhetoric of technology and political rhetoric from an intersectional feminist, postcolonial lens. Specifically, my work aims to build from and contribute to digital humanities scholarship on “extrahuman” or “posthuman” methodologies in rhetorical theory by unpacking unpacking comparative methodologies across disciplines in Science and Technology Studies (STS), an interdisciplinary niche that engages technology and science from a cultural, social perspective. In particular, my work engages Critical Algorithm Studies (CAS), a multidisciplinary niche in STS that explores “the emergence of ‘algorithms’ as objects of interest for disciplines beyond mathematics, computer science, and software engineering” (Social Media Collective (SMC)). My research centers around themes pertaining to “agency” – rhetorical, epistemic, political, and otherwise. Much of my past and current research has used “agency” as a vector into deconstructing the epistemological and ontological foundations of critical methodologies and rhetorical theory. Specific case studies in said writing include analyses of Islamophobic and antisemitic autocomplete prompts in Google Search, operations of natural language processing (NLP) algorithms in Google AI in discourse around Israel-Palestine, and how the interface design, UX/UI experience, and marketing of specific apps that are used to access current news and information facilitate or obscure how users understand their own engagement with partisan news and political information.

My current short-term writing project is revising my dissertation chapter, “Epistemic Agency in the Age of Filter Bubble (Re)Production,” into an article manuscript (information forthcoming) at the suggestion of my dissertation committee. My long-term research goals include expanding beyond my past work on “algorithms” “in general” by shifting my focus to consider search engines as rhetorical objects and knowledge gatekeepers, with the ultimate goal of adapting my dissertation work into a book. My other “side project” involves further practicing SEO content writing and strategy. These projects have developed naturally from my dissertation, Filtering Agency: The Politics of Rhetorical Agency in Posthuman Rhetorical Algorithm Studies, in which I explored “extrahuman” conceptions of rhetorical agency by drawing from Karen Barad’s theories of agential realism and their influence on critical algorithm studies (CAS) and applying that methodological framework to controversies surrounding the role of technology in political culture by taking Eli Pariser’s concept of The Filter Bubble in discourse around the impact of algorithmic filtering on the 2016 U.S. election cycle as a case study.