This project was conducted as part of the CIS 605 course (Cultural and Critical Theory in Communication) in Spring 2026.

Who Am I?

I am a media psychology and a quantitative scholar. My training is STEM-oriented: I work primarily with structural equation modeling (SEM), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to generate empirically testable models of media effects. This methodological orientation places me within a school of thought that treats digital media as tool whose design features can potentially produce measurable psychological consequences for users. I came to this focus through a growing awareness that platforms through which so many people now construct and perform their sense of self are themselves structured by economic imperatives and design logics that are largely invisible to users. I believe that scholarship in this area carries a genuine obligation to the populations it studies. As Valkenburg and Peter (2013) established in their Differential Susceptibility to Media Effects Model, individuals vary considerably in how and why they are affected by media  and understanding those mechanisms is a prerequisite for meaningful intervention, whether at the platform, clinical, or policy level.

In Rutledge’s (2010) framing, media psychology is the applied study of what happens when people interact with media as producers, distributors, and consumers, examined through the lens of psychological theory. That definition aligns with my work because it refuses to treat the human-media relationship as unidirectional or static. I see social media use as a transactional, bidirectional process: users shape platforms through their behavior, while platforms in turn shape users through the affordances they offer and the social norms they reinforce. Looking forward, I anticipate that my research will serve multiple career trajectories. Within academia, I aim to contribute peer-reviewed scholarship to leading journals in communication and media psychology, and to mentor students. Outside the academy, I see a direct applications in media policy, one that informs evidence-based platform design standards.

References

Rutledge, P. (2010). What is media psychology? And why you should care. Media Psychology Research Center, 10, 1-10.

Valkenburg, P. M., & Peter, J. (2013). The differential susceptibility to media effects model. Journal of communication, 63(2), 221-243.