research Projects:

(Note: click titles to view the study)

The Paradox of Privacy: Facebook Use, Knowledge, Attitude, and Behavior

This study assesses individuals' use of Facebook, their knowledge and attitude toward Facebook's privacy policy, as well as their subsequent adjustment (or not) of their own privacy settings. The survey method was employed in addition to a content analysis of Facebook's privacy policy.

Usability Report for Tree

Tree is a vocabulary enhancing iPhone application created by my partner Tianran Liu and myself. The app was designed to replace current GRE study materials for the verbal reasoning section. Users completed a prequestionnaire, several small tasks, and a post-questionnaire with the usability software Morae.

(Dis)connections in Cloud Atlas: A Textual Analysis of David Mitchell's Novel

Cloud Atlas explores the encompassing theme of real and virtual (dis)connections by illuminating specific matters of technology, memory, power, and individual agency. This study utilizes narrative textual analysis to consider various potential social, political, and philosophical implications of a technologically advancing society.

A Contextual Conceptualization of Control

The Internet—the ultimate convergence of numerous spaces and identities into one virtual arena (individuals simultaneously performing as consumer, sister, daughter, student, friend, colleague, etc.). There has been a dissolution of these (formerly) enclosed identities as a result of technology. Previous work on control by Gilles Deleuze is synthesized as I expound the prescient conceptual definition he elucidated two decades ago.

The Effect of Religiosity and Congregational Status on Tolerance for Religious Disagreement Among Jehovah's Witnesses

This study proposal is designed to examine intercultural/interpersonal communication phenomena between members of Jehovah’s Witnesses and those of differing beliefs. Surveys would be administered to 20 congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses. 

Collisions of the Collective and the Individual in a Theocratic Oligarchy

‘Extension transference' is a digression from a community being grounded in an individual’s sincere desire for spirituality and toward a rigid organizational structure. Interviews were conducted with former Jehovah's Witnesses in order discover whether this theme emerged from their responses.