Travel Scholarship Winner for #AoIR2017 – Olga Boichak

by | Aug 8, 2017 | Awards, Conferences, Uncategorized

Each year, through the generous donations of AoIR conference attendees, we are able to fund several travel scholarships for junior scholars to attend the conference. We want to recognize our scholarship recipients and share with you a little bit about them and their interests.

Olga Boichak

Who are you?
Olga Boichak (@xelgabraun)

Where are you from?
I am a social scientist from Ukraine, pursuing a doctorate at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, NY.

What is your current area of study?
My research interests span material and infrastructural properties of social media – I am curious to know how human and non-human agents use social media to advance political goals. My dissertation foregrounds the role of Facebook in the emergence of a battlefront volunteer movement in Ukraine – an instance of platform-mediated collectives, mitigating the casualties of war.

Describe the research you will present at AoIR 2017.
Our study explores the role of automated Twitter accounts (a.k.a. bots) throughout the stages of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Under the guidance of Dr. Jeff Hemsley, our research team at Syracuse University is developing an innovative approach to bot detection. We are excited to share our findings with colleagues who might utilize our method to discover orchestrated social media campaigns in other cultural and political contexts.

Have you presented at AoIR in the past? If yes, what has been your experience? If #AoIR2017 Tartu is your first AoIR conference, what made you choose this conference? What do you expect from it?
#AoIR2017 will be my first AoIR conference, and I am excited for an opportunity to be part of this active and vibrant community of internet researchers.