I am a Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies, of the School of Communication at Northwestern University. In my research, I focus on understanding social processes that affect information sharing in user contributed content systems—people sharing files, blog posts, photos, tags, status updates, tweets, location information, without always being completely aware of who might be out there paying attention.

In my dissertation, Social Influences on User Behavior in Group Information Repositories, I asked why it is so difficult to find the information one needs when sharing files with a group of people using a central server or repository. I found that users’ choices when organizing and labeling files are shaped by an awareness of others’ needs and preferences in surprising ways, and that these choices have enduring, cumulative consequences for future users of a repository. For example, users are hesitant to delete files because they do not want to prevent others from accessing them in the future. However, the choice NOT to delete, made for social reasons, means that repositories become more and more cluttered over time. Also, when trying to organize and label files in such a way that another person would be able to find them later, users who believed the other person was similar to them created information hierarchies that were easier to navigate. Social forces shape the information infrastructure in lasting ways that can preclude—or facilitate—access to information.

I am currently working on several projects investigating language use and shared meaning in user contributed content systems. I want to better understand what influences the content of users’ contributions, the form the contributions take, and the inferences people make about each other based on the information available to them through the system. My goal is to produce scientific results that I will use to develop design guidelines for future systems.

Contact me at ejrader at northwestern dot edu.