BA in French Teaching; PhD in Educational Technology; Associate Professor of ICT at University of Kentucky School of Information Science

I am an interdisciplinary digital methods researcher studying meaning-making practices on online platforms. Most of my work has dealt with informal learning through social media, but I'm increasingly dabbling in online Mormonism, the online far right, and various combinations of the three.

My CV is available here.

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Discovered a quirky museum spotlighting local artists and found in their gift shop a zine that a former student of mine contributed to. Double win!


🔗 linkblog: Reddit turns 20, and it’s going big on AI



Reddit is a really interesting example of digital labor issues as they relate to both social media and AI. I wonder how things will go over the next few years.


🔗 linkblog: Radio TĂ©lĂ©vision Suisse A NeuchĂątel aussi, les tĂ©lĂ©phones portables seront interdits Ă  l'Ă©cole obligatoire



Bon, je comprends ces soucis, mais je ne suis pas sĂ»r que de telles interdictions soient la bonne rĂ©ponse. Pourtant, vu que je suis plus ouvert Ă  une interdiction de l’IA Ă  l’école, il faut que je dĂ©veloppe un peu plus ma philosophie ici.


📚 bookblog: The Sound of Mormonism: A Media History of Latter-day Saints (â€ïžâ€ïžâ€ïžđŸ–€đŸ–€)



I’m being a little hard on this book because it wasn’t quite was I was expecting. There’s a lot of good stuff in here despite not having some of what I was hoping to find. I do wonder if it would have been better as the original lecture it’s based on: You could hear some of the audio, and I think some of the fat could be trimmed from the manuscript.




I feel like we need to talk more about epistemology—and especially the social construction of facts—in the era of chatbot LLMs.


🔗 linkblog: Teachers Are Not OK



Bookmarked this a while ago and am finally reading it. So infuriating.




Dr. Calvin discovers the labor problems in academic publishing.


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🔗 linkblog: The Internet of Consent - Anil Dash



Lots of good observations in here, and I need to think through the implications for digital methods research.




I know what this school means, and I hate feeling like I’m playing ivory tower definitions games, but it REALLY bugs me when we limit “technology” to “things with chips in them.” A wiffle ball is technology, too.


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Who schedules an academic conference to overlap with Halloween? And how long ago did they stop having kids at home?


🔗 linkblog: Funding Cuts Are a ‘Gut Punch’ for STEM Education Researchers



What’s happening at the NSF is a tragedy, and I’m upset about all of these cuts. That said, I’ve long been skeptical about how the NSF has been used to promote STEM education at the expense of other worthy (but less economically productive) causes in schools. If Trump’s petty—and often cruel—cuts are a warning sign about how government can distort research priorities, there’s a deeper issue lurking in the background that we also need to wrestle with.


🔗 linkblog: Researchers Scrape 2 Billion Discord Messages and Publish Them Online



I confess that I would have found this interesting in an earlier part of my career. Now, though, I’m reminded that I built that career on a methodological approach that’s uncomfortable close to surveillance, and I don’t love that.


🔗 linkblog: Duolingo CEO says AI is a better teacher than humans—but schools will exist ‘because you still need childcare’



I hate everything in this article.


🔗 linkblog: How Miami Schools Are Leading 100,000 Students Into the A.I. Future



There are some critical perspectives in this piece, but certainly not enough in my book. [gift link]




Trying to figure out whether hate listening to the audiobook of Moneyball has implications for my suitability to teach my department’s Intro to Data Science class.


🔗 linkblog: American Schools Were Deeply Unprepared for ChatGPT, Public Records Show



Fascinating piece that underscores how often cheerleading voices are the only ones valued in edtech—and also how much education has been forced to respond to big tech companies simply releasing their products into the world wirhout input from those it will effect.


new publication: Jacques Ellul and educational technology



I’ve repeatedly referenced 20th century French technology scholar Jacques Ellul on my blog(s) since the beginning of the year. While my interest in Ellul’s work is also personal and political, I wrote back in February that one of the main reasons I’m reading a lot of Ellul right now is to add a stronger theoretical foundation to my scholarly work. With that context in mind, I’m happy to share that my first Ellul-inspired article has just been published in the Journal of Computing and Higher Education!


🔗 linkblog: Oklahoma education standards say students must identify 2020 election 'discrepancies'



Ryan Walters continues to be shameful.


🔗 linkblog: UK launching social media campaign spotlighting NIH-funded research



NIH funding is an important part of my employer’s budget, so I think this kind of advocacy is important. However, it rubs me the wrong way that we’re speaking up publicly about potential funding cuts and being largely silent and “well, gotta follow the law” when our marginalized students are being targeted.




I doubt I have time today for a longer, more nuanced post, so please enjoy this subtweet: Anyone whose takeaway from the University of Zurich Reddit study is “AI is good at convincing people!” and doesn’t even mention the HUGE ethical issues in passing is missing the point.




That feeling when you write an article for a lesser journal’s special issue but actually find a home in a stronger journal after the special editors reject it.




Today, a student from across campus explained that they used ChatGPT to identify me as a potential thesis committee member, and I am shallow enough to have had a very brief flicker of positive feeling toward the technology.


new publication: documenting a teacher group on far-right social media



I’m pleased to be able to finally share the publication in the British Journal of Educational Technology of an article that Dan Krutka and I have been working on for some time, which documents activity in a teachers’ group on a far-right social media platform (which we intentionally don’t identify within the paper). Here’s a link to a full-text, read-only version of the article, and here’s the abstract as a preview:


🔗 linkblog: Reddit Issuing 'Formal Legal Demands' Against Researchers Who Conducted Secret AI Experiment on Users



WAIT. They prompt engineered the AI tool to disregard informed consent and ethical concerns?


🔗 linkblog: Researchers Secretly Ran a Massive, Unauthorized AI Persuasion Experiment on Reddit Users



I’ve been waiting for 404 (or someone else) to report on this so that I could rage post it (and assign it in future classes). What a terrible breach of research ethics.




A good work day is one where a colleague asks if you have a d20 in your office (I did!) because you seem like the kind of person who would (I am!).


🔗 linkblog: Who Ordered That? On AI, Education, and the Illusion of Necessity | Punya Mishra's Web



I would be more critical of generative AI than Punya, but this is a solid, important argument.


🔗 linkblog: ICT class gives thumbs up to new emoji submission to Unicode



This project is one of my favorite things to come out of the program I teach in, and I’m glad Meghan’s work is getting recognition!




One of the most frustrating experiences I’ve ever had with a journal appears to be coming to a happy conclusion, and that’s not a bad way to start a Monday.


🔗 linkblog: They’re putting A1 in the classrooms.



This video has been on my mind all morning, and it makes me so sad.


🔗 linkblog: Trump administration’s attack on university research accelerates



I don’t personally need research funding, but I work in an academic ecosystem that’s highly dependent on it. Things aren’t looking good.




I hate doing anything that seems to give Skinner any credit—especially after seeing how critical of him Ellul has been—but associating cleaning off our breakfast bar with lighting a scented candle has worked some behaviorist magic on me.


🔗 linkblog: OpenAI and Anthropic are fighting over college students with free AI



I was already planning to voice skepticism about Apple partnerships with universities in a manuscript I’m writing, but now I’ve got this to cite as well.


🔗 linkblog: Trump’s Secret Police Are Now Disappearing Students For Their Op-Eds



Masnick’s writing has never struck me as inflammatory or rushed. If he’s using this language, we should all be worried.


🔗 linkblog: Beshear vetoes bill Kentucky professors say erodes academic tenure at public universities ‱ Kentucky Lantern



This is unlikely to make a difference, but I’m grateful anyway.


🔗 linkblog: How the Ph.D. Project, and 45 colleges, became a target of the Trump administration



This is what my employer cut ties with.