
Saif Shahin Assistant Professor School of Communication
- Additional Positions at AU
- Faculty Affiliate, Antiracist Research & Policy Center
- Faculty Fellow, Internet Governance Lab
- Member, Asian Studies Advisory Council
- Degrees
- Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin, U.S.A., 2017 M.Phil., Jawaharlal Nehru University, India, 2011 M.A., University of Central Lancashire, U.K., 2002 B.A., University of Delhi, India, 2001
- Bio
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Saif Shahin joined the American University in August 2018. His scholarship focuses on critical data studies, digital culture, and global media and politics, and is underpinned by a normative commitment to social justice. His research has been featured in a variety of high-impact journals including New Media & Society; Information, Communication & Society; Social Science Computer Review; American Behavioral Scientist; Communication Methods and Measures and Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. His JMCQ article was a finalist for the journal’s 2017 Outstanding Research Article of the Year Award. He has also won awards at annual conferences of the International Communication Association and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
Shahin’s latest research looks at artificial intelligence and big data as a sociopolitical phenomena, the interplay of emotion and cognition in digital discourses, and online identity construction as a sociotechnical practice. He works with qualitative, quantitative, and computational methods of research — including machine learning, social network analysis, and sentiment analysis. He is also interested in advancing the methodology of communication research, especially mixed-methods.
He enjoys working on collaborative projects and has coauthored multiple journal articles and conference papers with graduate students. He teaches graduate and undergraduate seminars on research methods, data analytics and media, technology and culture. He previously worked as a journalist in India, England, and the Middle East, and continues to contribute commentaries and news analyses on current affairs to publications worldwide.
For more information, visit Shahin's personal homepage or check out his profiles on ResearchGate and Google Scholar. You may also follow him on Twitter.
- See Also
- @shahin_saif on Twitter
- saifshahin.com
- ResearchGate
- For the Media
- To request an interview for a news story, call AU Communications at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.
Teaching
Fall 2020
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COMM-378 Intro to Comm Research Methods
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COMM-704 Media, Technology & Democracy
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COMM-898 Doctoral Continuing Enrollment
Spring 2021
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COMM-420 Topics in Mass Media: Taming Big Data
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COMM-754 Media Law and Policy
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COMM-898 Doctoral Continuing Enrollment
Scholarly, Creative & Professional Activities
Selected Publications
- User-Generated Nationalism: Interactions with Religion, Race, and Partisanship in Everyday Talk Online (2020)
- The Disinformed Election (2020)
- White Twitter: Tracing the Evolution of the 'Alt-Right' in Retweets, 2009-2016 (2020)
- Big Data and the Illusion of Choice: Comparing the Evolution of India’s Aadhaar and China’s Social Credit System as Technosocial Discourses (2019)
- Facing Up to Facebook: How Digital Activism, Independent Regulation, and Mass Media Foiled a Neoliberal Threat to Net Neutrality (2019)
Media Appearances
- Minneapolis wanted to pay social media influencers to fight misinformation around Derek Chauvin trial (USA Today)
- What role did social media play during the Arab revolutions (BBC Arabic)
- Parler's post-election popularity sparks misinformation concerns (The Hill)
- Here's what disinformation experts are watching out for on Election Day (ABC7)
- As false info hits 'boiling point,' ads warn US voters (AFP)
- 30 Minutes On... Social Media (American Magazine)