Ryan McGrady

My current research with the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure at UMass Amherst uses mixed methods to study large internet platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Wikipedia. Much of the work on video platforms involves producing, analyzing, and comparing representative samples to describe broad platform-wide patterns and anomalies. Most of my PhD research focused on Wikipedia, its community dynamics, and the systems of rules which enable it to work, and my dissertation examined the "production of encyclopedic authority" throughout the history of encyclopedias. I remain interested in the ways Wikipedia manages to adapt to its important but ever-changing place in the world. I'm also affiliated as a researcher with Media Cloud, a news database and media analysis platform.