Summary of Research

I am currently finishing my Ph.D in Sociology at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) where I also earned a bachelor's degree in Communication. I research how migrants and under-served communities in Mexico and China use new technologies. I am researcher on a grant funded by the University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS) that analyzes emerging information communication technology (ICT) practices of new technology users from a rural, migrant-sending village in Mexico. I recently presented preliminary findings at Technologies and Infrastructure for Emerging Regions (TIER), a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded consortium of researchers at UC Berkeley who develop technology solutions for emerging regions. I am preparing for my dissertation fieldwork in China. Most recently, I received an National Science Foundation grant to fund my project, "China's Internet Policy and Digital Network Architecture: Information Communication TechnologyPractices among Youths and Migrants." I will be working in Bejing, China with the China Internet Network Information Center 中国互联网络信息中心 (CNNIC), the government agency that regulates all internet activity.

My research takes place in a wide range of international settings. I employ a variety of ethnographic methods in each field site. Most recently, I was given the Young Scholar Award to participate in the China-India-US Workshop on Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Workshop in Bangalore, India in the summer of 2008. From the workshop, I was funded by the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in Banglore on the role of NGO’s in technology innovation policy-making. After completing the fieldwork, I was also asked by the California Institute of Technology (CalIT) to stay in India to assess the potential use of cellphones as predictors of water born diseases.

I am most engaged by the theories and studies coming out of geography, cultural studies and communications. The theoretical lines of inquiry that are most close to my research are discussions on mobility, social capital, technology, space, and design. My understanding of technology in under-served communities is grounded in several years of professional experience prior to graduate school. I have also served as the Graduate Student Advisory Editor for Science, Technology, and Human Values, Journal of the Society for Social Studies of Science.

Funding

Most recently, I received an NSF grant to fund a summer project at CNNIC in China. I am also a recipient of Toronto University's Dissertation Workshop Award for doctoral students working on social capital theory in Asia. The University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC MEXUS) has given me several grants for my work in Mexico. I have also received additional funding from University of California's Labor Employment Research Fund (LERF), University of California Pacific Rim Research Fund (UC Pac Rim), and Worldwide University Network (WUN). I was recently funded to by the International Sociological Association's Research Committee on Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy (RC 19) to present my research on US internet policy in Stockholm, Sweden. The previous year I was funded to present my work on World of Warcraft Chinese Gamers at Leeds University by the World Universities Network (WUN).

Why mobile populations and technology?

My passion is to understand the emerging social forms of mobility and connections that come with a mobile lifestyle that increasingly relies on ICTs. I am most interested in how this question applies for non-elite users. One of the stories of the digital revolution is that some of the most marginalized and poorest people are now actively incorporating ICT tools into their lives. The phenomena of massive internal migrations to urban areas, the widespread adoption of more affordable ICTs, and an increase in social dislocations associated with the nationalized adoption of global information networks are being seen more frequently among more unevenly developed countries. As this becomes a more familiar story around the world, new forms of inequality will arise. How do we rethink what inequality means in era where everyone has basic access to ICT tools? How are marginalized users creating coherence with ICTs? At the same time, new forms of usage will emerge. We need to be attentive to these new forms so that content and tools can meaningful interface with non-Western and non-traditional ways of thinking and practices.

I have always been fascinated by the intertwining of physical and virtual space, such as the physical city landscape to the virtual cyberspace. I have never thought of these as separate spaces - but once I started graduate school I realized that many researchers treat these as separate, which then excludes all the wonderful ways these spaces are mixing, flowing and fluxing! These kinds of hybrid geographies produce new practices and processes that I want to better understand. I am most interested in how the convergence and mixed use of information communication technologies (ICT), from cellphones to the internet, transform communication practices and introduce new opportunities and constraints for youth and migrants. My work considers how technology policies and digital architectures affect how communities maintain social connections.

Why under-served communities?

The communities I work and research in are my homes around the world. They tend to be marginalized and underserved by their country, city or even the world. They are communities that are confronting the role of technology in maintaining social connections. And in many ways they are confronting the failures of technology to bridge them to more elite and resource rich social networks. For all the claims that technology democratizes information, these groups are grappling with what that really means when information is available but not accessible. It is easy in technology research to get caught up in the hopes, hypes and highs of ICT tools. The priviledge that I have to live and research in some of the most underserved communities allows me to critically question the role of technology in society. I also feel a great sense of responsibility in ensuring that the stories of the people I know are told, because if we only here about how much the celebrities love Twitter or how the cellphone is bringing Africa out of poverty, than we are definitely getting a very distorted account of the world.

Why grad school?

After spending considerable amounts of time working in impoverished New York city neighborhoods (e.g. South Bronx, Bedford Stuyvesant, Jackson Heights), I have realized that many misconceptions about these communities have prevented technology companies from seeing low-income populations as more than media consumers. They are also the creators and distributors of information. While my professional work has been an attempt to address this oversight, I eventually realized that digital literacy programs are limited in their long-term effectiveness due to their short-term solutions to larger problems that extend beyond the community to technology policy and design. In order to better understand the intersection of policy and practice, I decided to pursue a doctoral degree in sociology to learn how to conduct research that could better inform ICT policymakers, software engineers, and product designers about the everyday lives of low-income users.

Dissertation

I investigate the role of telecommunication policies, geographical dispersion, access to technology, and social networks in shaping the inter-personal communication patterns and communication inequality of internal migrants in Wuhan, China as mediated by cellphone and internet use. Two aspects that remain constant throughout my research are attention to digital architectures and policies that govern digital networks. My research on infrastructure asks how the architecture of digital networks constrains or enables policy maker's ability to administer networks and ICT users to communicate. Contrasts in ICT architecture suggests that different policies, practices, and meanings may emerge depending on which one is used. While my dissertation will primarily focus on China, I plan to include several chapters on relevant comparisons to fieldwork that I have conducted in Mexico and the US.

I am guided and inspired by some of the most amazing minds and possess the most supportive dissertation committee a graduate student could ever have. My dissertation chair is Richard Madsen, one of the most prolific analysts of Chinese society. I work closely with Christena Turner, an amazing ethnographer who is an expert on Japan. I also study with April Linton who researches fair trade and globalization. She has been a key figure in my evolving understanding of urban life in America and in China. I study with Barry Brown, an ethnomethodologist who examines new technologies for leisure and entertainment. We also collaborate on a project about new technology users in rural Mexico. Barry Naughton is my other amazing advisor from political science, who is a China expert. I also strongly believe in graduate student collaborations, a rarity in graduate programs. From the beginning of my program, I have closely collaborated with my esteemed colleague, Leah Muse-Orlinoff. We received joint funding UC MEXUS for our research on cellphone usage among Mexican immigrants.

btw - if you're still unsure what I do here are some quotes from friends:

"Tricia is a serious scholar, not some junky reporter." Chun Ray Xia

"Tricia is a culture vulture and technogrpaher." Josh Kinberg