PACS news/July 25, 2022
DCSL Bids Farewell to Outgoing Postdoctoral Fellows
The Digital Civil Society Lab would like to extend a warm farewell to our outgoing postdoctoral fellows: Samantha Bradshaw, David Hausman, Soojong Kim, and Ashley Lee.
Being a postdoc at PACS and the DCSL was very fulfilling. I made lifelong friends, had opportunities to work on exciting interdisciplinary and collaborative projects, and learned so much from the broader community of scholars and practitioners at the lab and throughout the PACS network.
I published two academic papers (“The Gender Dimensions of Foreign Influence Operations” and “Playing Both Sides: Russian State-Backed Media Coverage of the Black Lives Matter Movement”) as well as several policy reports and shorter research memos. This includes a joint project with the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI) where we developed a playbook to combat information operations. Some of my other writing during the postdoc looked at accessibility issues and trust and safety flows, language gaps in content moderation practices, and disinformation in the Internet’s technical architecture.
In August, I will be joining American University as an Assistant Professor in New Technology and Security.
DCSL and PACS were the perfect place to be a postdoc while I was on the law school teaching market; I got feedback on my work, a great co-teaching experience, and lots of support from my lab colleagues. I published two papers while at the lab, both on immigration enforcement (in the Georgetown Law Journal and the Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization), and I’m starting as a professor this fall at the UC Berkeley School of Law.
As a postdoctoral fellow, I have had the opportunity to work with and learn from wonderful mentors, colleagues, and friends at Stanford PACS. My time at PACS has been riddled with unexpected joys and growth, and I could not imagine a better place than PDI and DCSL as a social scientist studying society and technology. The past two years with COVID-19 and all the political turmoil have been difficult for junior scholars like me, but I feel so lucky to have strong support from the PACS community. I was proud that I could call PACS my intellectual home.
As a new chapter of my academic journey, I will be joining the University of California Davis as a tenure-track assistant professor of Communication. So, I will be just a few hours away and am looking forward to keeping interacting with you all and dropping by from time to time!
See Soojong’s recent publications via Google Scholar.
At the Digital Civil Society Lab, I have worked on several different lines of research. My book manuscript, Youth and Digital Activism in a Surveillance Society, investigates how young activists in authoritarian and democratic countries leverage social media to engage in contentious politics and social movements. While the rise of networked publics represents opportunities for new players and modes of association, digital platforms also subject civil society actors to surveillance, censorship, and other forms of repression. Based on field research with young activists, I examine how these activists incorporate social media tactics into their political repertoires, as they navigate the emergent dynamics of state and corporate surveillance in the digital world. You can read more about this research in New Media & Society (forthcoming article 1 and article 2), The Social Dilemma, and Teen Vogue.
Some of the highlights of my time at the Digital Civil Society Lab include collaborating with colleagues on the AI, Assembly, and Democracy book, the Digital Assembly Research Network, and the Digital Public Infrastructures Project. I have also worked on projects related to online political discourse, movements, and misinformation. Some of this work can be found here and here. In a different line of research, I am collaborating with colleagues at Harvard and Stanford on public interest technology and computer science ethics pedagogy.
It has been a privilege to be part of the DCSL / PACS community. I am thankful for the unparalleled opportunity to return to my alma mater and engage with leading scholars and practitioners at DCSL, PACS, and the broader Stanford community.