Hi! I’m a Royster fellow and a Richard Cole fellow at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media, Univeristy of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My advisor is Dr. Shannon McGregor. I’m also affiliated with the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP), where I am working as the policy collaboration graduate assistant for 2022-2023. In Febraury 2023, I have been selected as one of the 12 NexGen Leaders of the U.S.-ROK Alliance by CSIS Korea Chair with support from the U.S. Embassy Seoul and the State Department. Previously, I worked at SNU FactCheck Center, the first and only fact-checking platform in South Korea.
I study how strategic actors communicate about emerging media and technology and their multifaceted impacts on people, industries, and society. During my years in the PhD program, I have been focusing on artificial intelligence (AI) systems and digital platforms. I believe how different actors (e.g., tech companies, government agencies, media, civil society, publics) strategically communicate impacts and harms makes a big difference, and I am passionate about my research because of its implications for justice and democracy. The aim of my research program is to ensure that the voice of the publics are not marginalized and meaningfully heard in these conversations around media and technology. My research program largely includes the following themes:
I approach my research with a “social science salsa-dancing," perspective, using a diverse set of computational, quantitative, and qualitative methods.
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đź’ś Acknowledgement: My research is generously supported by the Royster Society of Fellows and the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP). My dissertation project, in particular, is generously supported by the William Francis Clingman Jr. Ethics Award and the Minnie S. & Eli A. Rubinstein Research Award.
“Transnational platform ecosystems harm children and women outside the West. Here’s how” Check out my op-ed piece on Tech Policy Press “Tech Companies Sit on Sidelines While Korean Children Are Drawn Into Digital Sex Trafficking”
“AI chatbot systems can harm users in several ways” Check out my op-ed piece on Slate🤖 “A South Korean Chatbot Shows Just How Sloppy Tech Companies Can Be With User Data”
Ph.D. in Communication, Expected
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
M.A. in Communication, 2018
Seoul National University, South Korea
B.A. in Media and Mass Communication, 2016
Korea University, South Korea
R, Python, SQL | SPSS, STATA, Qualtrics, MTurk
survey, experiment, content analysis, statistical analysis
interview/focus-group, textual analysis, grounded theory
A mass sex trafficking crime that happened in South Korea was only possible with the use of the combined affordances of several Internet platforms and cloud storage providers, the majority of which are headquartered in the West.
We investigate what drives Americans’ opinions on whether the government, platforms, or individual users should be responsible for social media content. Using data from a nationally representative survey of over 10,000 Americans, we show how anti-establishment beliefs and beliefs in individualism may drive people to put the onus on individual users to bear the responsibility for online content.
A recent incident of personal data misuse in South Korea provides us a clear picture of what can go wrong, and how consumers can fight back.
We propose a new model that explains the gap between how AI companies and the public understand organizational crises caused by AI systems. How does a crisis of an AI company become scandalized? We use the case of a South Korean AI company, Scatterlab, to answer this question.