Journalism, media & communication Social media

Research team

• Dr Petya Eckler
• Dr Chamil Rathnayake
• Dr Sallyanne Duncan
• Dr Esperanza Miyake

This area of research focuses on the ways in which digital media platforms structure and influence social processes, attitudes and behaviours.

Our current projects deal with how young people use social media, how they build a digital self online and its relationship to the real self (Eckler), social media use in digital doorstepping, the ethics of digital death reporting and the effects on journalists of processing traumatic user generated content (Duncan), computational analysis of visual complexity in online social photography, and network analysis of social media reactions to political controversy and crises (Rathnayake) and constructions of race/gender online and the politics of digital disconnection (Miyake).