Graduate Student Affiliates
Mowafak Allaham is a doctoral candidate in Northwestern’s Technology and Social Behavior program interested in the areas of artificial intelligence and computational social science. He combines methods from computer science and statistics with theories from social sciences and communication studies to study AI governance and alignment.
Mandi Cai is a Ph.D. student in the Technology and Social Behavior program. Her research centers on the intersection of politics, computational methods, and technology. Her research examines uncertainty and the underlying processes associated with generating data and predictions, and how best to visualize and communicate that information to the broader public to foster AI and data literacy. Mandi’s work is often informed by my experience as a data journalist.
Hoda Fakhari is a Ph.D. candidate in the Media, Technology, & Society program and M.S. candidate in Applied Statistics at Northwestern. Broadly, she studies how the communication of complex and uncertain information in the contexts of science and health influences people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Using mixed-methods, her research focuses on explicating, measuring, and evaluating the role of complexity and uncertainty in risk perception and decision-making to develop communication interventions that promote healthier, safer, and more equitable outcomes for individuals and society.
Aidan Fitzsimons is a doctoral student in the Technology and Social Behavior Program at Northwestern University. He studies intelligent coaching and co-writing tools to support adolescents’ authentic reflective and personal narrative writing, drawing on human-computer interaction and narrative psychology to help coach emerging adults through self-concept development and build self-presentation skills. He is also interested in how co-writing with LLMs shapes the political socialization of youth and its downstream consequences for democratic citizenship.
Fatima Gaw is a Media, Technology, and Society PhD candidate in the Media, Technology, & Society Program. She investigates how media logics, platforms, and ecosystems shape contemporary politics. Her research focuses on social media influencers, alt-tech platforms, and propaganda using multimodal computational methods, network analysis, and quantitative methods. Her work is published in New Media & Society, Political Communication, Convergence, Policy & Internet, among others
Wenyu (Teresa) Liao is a Ph.D. student in the Media, Technology, & Society program at Northwestern University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of digital labor, politics, and AI/algorithms, with a strong commitment to developing comparative and global perspectives. She has explored topics such as content moderation, content creators, and platform-mediated food delivery labor. More broadly, she is motivated by a desire to improve people’s lives and strives to embody this ideal throughout her academic and practitioner journey
Chloe Mortenson: Chloe is a PhD Candidate in the Media, Technology, & Society doctoral program. Her research examines the intersection of public opinion and communication, focusing on how media and message framing shape public attitudes toward politics, social issues, and democratic governance. Her work spans four key areas: strategic communication research that explores how message channels and content influence political attitudes and election trust; artificial intelligence studies investigating how AI models from different nations may impact political socialization and democratic alignment; digital media research examining how online platforms facilitate the spread of both mainstream and extreme political content; and political communication work that seeks to better understand public conceptualizations of democracy and support for democratic institutions.
Marcelina Przespolewska is a Ph.D. student in the Media, Technology & Society program. Her research centers on the intersection of politics, computational methods, and technology. Marcelina develops and applies computational approaches to model political behavior and digital political information ecosystems. Her work also examines regulatory and governance challenges posed by emerging technologies, particularly where they intersect with political processes.
Yanling Zhao is a doctoral student in the Media, Technology, & Society program at Northwestern University. Her research centers on media effects, political communication, and public opinion, with an emphasis on new technology, digital media, and mis/disinformation. Yanling employs a range of methodological approaches in her scholarship, including computational, survey, and experimental methods.