Current Projects
1) Collaboration Technologies for Emergent Groups Engaged in Physical Work
In collaboration with Terri Griffith (SFU) and Nilesh Saraf (SFU)
Link to AOM2024 Proceedings
My doctoral dissertation investigates how crowds use digital technologies such as mobile applications and social media to coordinate physical work on the ground in contexts like spontaneous disaster relief efforts and protest mobilization. I focus on the phenomenon of physical emergent collaboration, examining how groups without established roles, hierarchy, or prior structure use technology to organize tasks that involve material resources, spatial constraints, and real-world interdependencies.
This research unfolds across three complementary studies. First, I develop a theoretical model that clarifies the nature of physical emergent collaboration and identifies the socio-technical mechanisms through which digital platforms can support self-organized group work. Second, I design and run a large-scale multiplayer online experiment that tests how specific technological features shape coordination and awareness in a simulated disaster-relief environment. Third, I build an agent-based simulation to explore how collective organization emerges from individual cognition and communication under uncertainty. Together, these studies offer an integrated understanding of how digital technologies can enhance bottom-up coordination in physically interdependent settings.
2) Effects of Negative Word-of-Mouth and Joint Consumption on the Box Office Performance of Movies: An Agent-Based Model (ABM) Approach
In collaboration with Charles Weinberg (UBC), Jason Ho (SFU)
We explore the effects of negative word-of-mouth (WOM) and joint consumption on the box office performance of motion pictures. Unlike previous research that primarily focuses on individual movie-goer behavior, this study highlights the significance of shared consumption experiences, particularly in group settings, where negative WOM can have a compounded effect. Using an agent-based model (ABM), we simulate the movie choice process, incorporating factors such as advertising, WOM, and group formation dynamics. Our model advances prior work by explicitly considering how negative WOM can both reduce an individual’s desire to watch a movie and hinder their ability to form a viewing group. We also demonstrate how strategic advertising can mitigate the adverse effects of negative WOM by “front-loading” box office sales in the opening week. This research contributes to the broader literature on consumer behavior by providing a nuanced understanding of how social interactions and digital communication shape entertainment consumption.
Past Projects
3) The Spread of Negative Emotions on Social Media
In collaboration with Nilesh Saraf (SFU), JM Goh (SFU), Srabana Dasgupta (SFU), Dianne Cyr (SFU)
Published on PLoS One (Link)
This study examines emotional contagion on social media following celebrity suicides, focusing on how discrete emotions spread through retweet cascades and how such dynamics may contribute to harmful outcomes such as copycat suicide. Using a comprehensive Twitter dataset covering four events, we apply a valence–arousal framework to theorize the propagation of emotional content. Emotions for over one million tweets and retweets are extracted with a BERT-based model and used to predict four propagation metrics: cascade size, lifetime, speed, and burstiness. Results show that emotional messages spread in distinct ways after tragic events. Disgust is the most contagious, spreading widely, rapidly, and with longevity. Anger and surprise generate fast but short-lived bursts, while fear spreads weakly despite high arousal. Joy, though less common, persists longer than neutral and negative content. These findings demonstrate that discrete emotions vary substantially in their diffusion patterns, indicating that valence–arousal alone is insufficient for understanding emotional contagion at scale.