Research & Publications
Dissertation Project
An Affective Technology of Heimat: Whiteness, Nation Building and Social Media in Germany
My dissertation examines the patterns of attachments and affective investments in Whiteness, objectifications, and exclusions entrenched in the construct of Heimat, which is broadly defined as “homeland” in German-speaking contexts. I use computational social science and discourse analytical methods to analyze how Heimat is discussed, embodied, and made sense of in affective ways on Twitter and in focus-group conversations. Sitting at the intersections of critical psychology, critical race and feminist theory, and Heimat scholarship, this research asks how Heimat functions affectively to (re)produce and maintain ideologies like White supremacy and nationalism. This dissertation contributes to a better understanding of how Whiteness and White supremacy are discussed, affectively experienced, and made sense of in German-speaking countries. Furthermore, as White Supremacy is an escalating global phenomenon, this dissertation contributes to an understanding of White nationalism and right-wing extremist violence across the globe.
Peer-Reviewed Publications
With Nga Than, Dr. Krystal M. Perkins, and Dr. Maria Y. Rodriguez in the Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology (2022)
This study examined German-speaking Twitter users’ reckoning with racism in response to the right-wing extremist shootings that targeted ethnic minorities in Hanau, Germany. We employed a mixed-methods analysis combining Structural Topic Modelling (STM) and discourse analysis. We used STM to identify broad topic patterns and focused on the topics involving the racialized commentary the German-speaking public offered in the aftermath of Hanau. The STM analysis resulted in 50 topics; among these conversations, racism in German society and racism: threats and fears were among the top 10 topics. In total, 36.8% of the 50 topics in the first month of the shootings were racism-related discussions but the majority of these discussions did not describe the Hanau shootings as racially motivated. We conducted a discourse analysis to capture a more fine-grained understanding of the users’ racialized conversations, focusing specifically on the discursive contexts in which racially suppressive discourses were used and taking place. We identified three racially suppressive discourses, including the explanation that the shootings/shooter was mentally ill, might be racially motivated, and a product of extremist groups. This study uncovered multifaceted public conversations in the aftermath of Hanau and offered interpretations of large-scale conversations that reckoned with racism on German-speaking Twitter.
With Nga Than and Dr. Liza Steele in Frontiers in Sociology (2022)
This article analyzes anti- and pro-immigrant attitudes expressed on Twitter following the Essex Lorry Deaths tragedy in October 2019 in Britain, in which 39 Vietnamese immigrants died in a sealed lorry truck on their way to their destination. We use Structural Topic Modeling, an automated text analysis method, to a Twitter dataset (N = 4,376), to understand public responses to the Lorry Deaths incident. Our findings show that Twitter users’ posts were organized into two themes regarding attitudes toward immigrants: (1) migration narratives, stereotypes, and victim identities, and (2) border control. Within each theme, both pro- and anti-immigration attitudes were expressed. Pro-immigration posts reflected counter-narratives that challenged the mainstream media’s coverage of the incident and critiqued the militarization of borders and the criminalization of immigration. Anti-immigration posts ranged from reproducing stereotypes about Vietnamese immigrants to explicitly blaming the victims themselves or their families for the deaths. This study demonstrates the uses and limitations of using Twitter for public opinion research by offering a nuanced analysis of how pro-and anti-immigration attitudes are discussed in response to a tragic event. Our research also contributes to a growing literature on public opinion about an often-forgotten immigrant group in the UK, the Vietnamese.
“Welcome to Gab”: Exploring Political Discourses in a Non-Moderated Social Media Platform
With Nga Than, Dr. Maria Rodriguez, and Di Yoong in Interdisciplinary Digital Engagement in Arts & Humanities (IDEAH) (2021)
The ecosystem of social media platforms has increased the ease of global communication, particularly opinion sharing. As a predominantly online movement, the alt-right has been proficient at utilizing and leveraging digital tools for recruitment and propaganda. Gab is one of the platforms that many alt-right supporters use, in part because of its emphasis on free speech. Using structural topic modeling (STM) on a 5% random sample of Gab posts (n= 403,469) collected between August 2016 and July 2019, our final model resulted in 85 topics of which we examined six more closely. These topics discuss themes of knowledge production (all figures), freedom of speech (Figure 4), political dimensions (Figure 5), and red-pilling (Figure 7). Together, these six topics provide both broad and nuanced understandings of the thematic content on the platform, specifically on how the coded language of the alt-right, which has racist, homophobic, violent, and misogynistic undertones, is not necessarily filled with overt expressions of hate. The study provides evidence that unchecked freedom of speech and the formation of community building through hashtags like #GabFam can generate an echo-chamber of extremist ideology that can further radicalize users, as shown by the Pittsburgh mass shooter who shared his manifesto on Gab prior to the attack.
Discourses of the Willkommenskultur (Welcoming culture) in Germany
With Dr. Arita Balaram and Dr. Krystal M. Perkins in Critical Discourse Studies (2020)
Given the rise of populist parties in Germany and the charge that multiculturalism is dead, the present research examines how everyday Germans formulate an account of cultural diversity and multiculturalism. We employ a critical discursive psychological analysis and focus particularly on the arguments used to criticize cultural diversity and multiculturalism. Asynchronous online interviews were conducted with eighteen native-born German citizens. The data analysis shows that participants criticized cultural diversity and multiculturalism by deploying ‘Leitkultur-style’ nationalistic discourses and normalizing the hierarchical relations between immigrants and Germans. Participants also questioned multiculturalism as an ideology and everyday practice and moved back and forth between diverging accounts. These discourses reinforce dominant ideologies that place immigrants’ responsibility to assimilate and adopt German cultural norms and values. Our findings suggest that there are critical, flexible, and contradictory social markers of multiculturalism that have significant ramifications for policy and to everyday people who face the real task of living with cultural diversity.
Public Scholarship
With Helena Najm (2022)
In the face of a national culture war and social isolation, events like Anti-Prom give teens the opportunity to transform institutions into supportive spaces where they can celebrate the unapologetically queer versions of themselves. Helena Najm and I speak with NYPL’s Caitlyn Colman-McGaw, recent high school graduates and Anti-Prom fashion club presidents Nikol Rafailova and Bryanna Ohene Kari-Kari, and Mindscapes artist-in-residence Christine Wong Yap about their collaboration to create a joyful night that models a more accepting city.
This fake Instagram account collage is the result form my work with the focus inquiry group “From My Window” in which we reflected on the pandemic’s social, psychological, and political transformations as CUNY students and educators. We used creative tools to reflect collectively on our personal and communal experiences in 2020 and 2021. In my final project, I curated my photos from 2020/2021 based on themes around nourishment, joy and grief, protest, spaces, and ritual and prayer.
