For the past year, I have had the privilege of working with a stellar research team at North Central College. Under the guidance of our professor, two of my peers and I began investigating the usage of image repair strategies in social media influencer YouTube apology videos. The first iteration of our research – a competitive paper – was accepted into and awarded a Top Paper award at the 2020 Central States Communication Association Annual Conference.

Specifically, my role within this research team is to collaborate with and project manage two other authors, as well as learn how to identify peer-reviewed journal articles, transcribe videos, code and analyze complex data, and write major takeaways from said data.

We will be continuing to expand our research during Summer 2020.

If you’d like to read more about my work involving social media influencers, read the article that I wrote for In Media Res with the help of my co-authors about how social media influencers David Dobrik and Jason Nash use podcasting to connect with their audiences, or check out a trendspotting project (presentation, one-sheet, and blog post) that I created for our on-campus PR firm explaining influencer marketing and authenticity.