Yiran Duan

Yiran Duan

PhD candidate at the iSchool of Syracuse University

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I am on the 2024 -2025 job market!

Greetings! I’m a PhD candidate (ABD) in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University (the iSchool). My research sits at the intersection of computational social science, social media studies, and environmental and social justice. I’m advised by Dr.Jeff Hemsley. I use both qualitative (e.g., semi-structured interview, qualitative content analysis) and quantitative (e.g., machine learning models, statistical analysis, data visualization) methods to conduct my research.

Research

  1. Qualitative Research: An interview study that explores how Dribbble.com influences, and influenced by its users’ practice and the design industry. Method: semi-structured interview & Fisher’s test. Read our work that published in Social Media + Society here. This is an image (Yes, I blurred th 30 participants’ faces in this picture to protect their privacy :] It only shows the other interviewer’s and mine.)

  2. Quantitative Research: A study that investigates what kinds of information about #Black/Blue/AllLivesMatter got posted and spread during the Black History month of 2022. Methods: content analysis, machine learning models, and data visualization. Read our work that published in Social Media + Society here.This is an image

  3. Cross-platform Research: A study that explores the content of 80 Instagram Reels, TikTok videos, YouTube Shorts, and YouTube regular videos and their 69,000+ comments about climate change using content analysis, regresions, and social network analysis. I just presented this study at the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) conference in Calgary, Canada, in October 2024. This is an image

Teaching

  1. IST 343 Data in Society (the recitation section) for Fall 2022 and Spring 2023. Proud to report that 95% of the Spring 2023 course evaluation rated my teaching as highly effective.

  2. IST 719 Data Visualization for Fall 2024. It’s a master’s and PhD level class that teaches students how to use R for data analysis and visualization. Each week, I create presentations and guide students through over 100 lines of R code in real-time. I start with an overview of the key concepts, then type a block of code while students follow along. Then I ask questions/explain the code. I also walk around the computer lab to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Life

When I’m not working on my research projects, I like to swim and play with my dog Mia.

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