Emelia Hughes is a Ph.D. student in computer science and engineering and a 2025–26 Graduate Justice Fellow at the institute. She previously worked as a research intern at Adobe and holds dual degrees in informatics and drawing & painting from the University of Washington.
What is the focus of your current research?
I study how social media platforms subtly shape how people form a sense of community online. On apps like TikTok and YouTube, people don’t simply find each other by chance or solely through their own agency. Instead, recommendation systems, labels, and interface cues decide whose content gets shown to whom and what kinds of content get treated as meaningful or popular. Over time, these features shape which communities form, what they look like, and what it feels like to participate in them.
I’m especially interested in small, everyday outcomes with major significance: feeling like you belong, trying to be unique without getting pushed into a box, and the tension between being recognized and being exposed. I look at how communities make sense of these systems together and how they adapt—sometimes leaning into what the platform rewards and sometimes finding creative ways around it.
How did you get interested in this topic?
I’ve always been drawn to the intersection of people and systems: how technology changes what’s possible socially and how people then reshape the technology through the way they use it. I experienced a big turning point while working on a project about credibility on YouTube. I built a tool that added outside citations next to videos, and I saw the real impact that small design change made on what people noticed and trusted.
Around the same time, I started paying closer attention to TikTok communities and kept noticing something fascinating: people weren’t only bonding over shared interests; they were bonding over shared theories about how the platform works. They would compare notes, trade strategies, and interpret shifts in visibility and attention together. That made me want to understand in a deeper way how platforms shape public conversation and social connection—and even how people come to understand themselves and others online.
How do you view your research as advancing the common good?
Conversations about social media often veer toward extremes, treating it as either dangerous and in need of strict control or as pure free expression that should be left alone. My research aims to offer a more grounded middle: understanding the real, everyday ways platforms shape people’s sense of belonging, identity, and safety. When visibility is managed by algorithms, being “seen” can be empowering, but exposure can also come with pressure, misinterpretation, or unwanted attention.
By articulating those tradeoffs and the strategies communities develop, I hope to inform platform design and governance that supports connection without inadvertently pushing people into risky or performative visibility. I also want this work to help educators and everyday users: giving people clearer language for what’s happening when a platform seems to reward certain identities or behaviors. If we understand those patterns better, we can build healthier online spaces where people have greater agency over their choices and the communities that form around them.
