The Technology and Information Policy Institute (TIPI) is thrilled to announce the recipients of our Graduate Student Research Fellowships for Spring 2025. We have funded six exceptional projects at the end of the last spring semester that delve into the complex relationship between emerging technologies and their wide-ranging societal impacts. This funding will be used for their work throughout 2025. Spanning diverse geographical contexts and research areas, these projects promise to make significant contributions to our understanding of evolving digital and political landscapes.
The 2025 TIPI Research Fellows and their projects:
- Emilia Edwards – AI-Generated Imagery and Photojournalistic Identity: A Case Study of Adobe
This project explores the reshaping of photojournalists’ professional identity due to the increasing use of generative AI in visual media. The project aims to understand how photojournalists interpret and respond to these changes, specifically examining their perceptions of their role, authorship, and credibility in a media landscape where synthetic images can be presented as news.
This project aligns with TIPI’s mission to examine the social impacts of digital media, the future of work, and the ethical use of AI. It focuses on how generative AI technologies and platform practices—specifically Adobe’s—are reshaping the norms, values, and labor conditions of photojournalism. Like TIPI’s Being Watched initiative, it addresses how visual technologies affect professional responsibility and public trust, contributing to broader discussions about ethics, authorship, and identity in AI-driven media systems.
- Tianyang Fu – By the People but Not For the People: Invisible Labor of Data Annotation Behind AI Development
This project investigates artificial intelligence (AI) systems not just as computational tools, but as complex information infrastructures built upon distributed and often invisible human labor. The project challenges the common public narrative that celebrates AI’s automation and productivity. Instead, it highlights that AI’s intelligence is fundamentally created by numerous workers who clean, label, and structure the datasets that power machine learning models.
This project engages directly with TIPI’s core concerns: equity, public interest technology, labor policy, and democratic oversight of digital systems. By studying data annotators as a vital but under-recognized part of AI development, this research contributes to policy-oriented inquiries into: 1) Transparency and traceability in AI model pipelines; 2) Outsourced labor practices and worker protections; and 3) Labor justice and visibility in technological design. The project aims to produce a peer-reviewed journal article on invisible labor and communicative infrastructures in AI. In parallel, I wish to develop a policy brief offering concrete recommendations for enhancing labor transparency and protection within AI development pipelines.
- Zhi Lin – Empowering Civic Engagement in AI Governance
This study investigates the challenges of governing and regulating AI by exploring the role of public participation. The research conceptualizes participatory governance within the context of generative AI, examining the communicative and cognitive factors that influence it. It uses the communication mediation model and its expanded O-S-R-O-R (Orientation-Stimulus-Reasoning-Orientation-Response) framework to guide the analysis.
This study is highly relevant to TIPI’s research agenda. It focuses on AI—one of TIPI’s key areas of interest—and addresses the topic of participatory governance. In doing so, it contributes to advancing digital equity and enhancing our understanding of digital inclusion for all individuals, both of which are central to TIPI’s mission.
- Xiaotong Liu – AI and workplace technology perceptions in transition
This project proposes to use qualitative data, specifically through interviews with individuals directly involved in Return-to-Office (RTO) transitions. The research will explore how employees’ perceptions of workplace technology, including AI applications, differ based on whether they are working remotely or on-site.
The project aligns with TIPI’s commitment to ethical AI practices by investigating how employees’ perceptions of AI and workplace technology shift between remote and on-site contexts, particularly in cross-cultural settings. By understanding how RTO policies shape emotional responses and technology adoption across different cultural backgrounds, the research addresses ethical tensions in AI deployment in workplace settings and the ethical issue regarding remote work versus RTO. Additionally, the study’s interdisciplinary approach, combining computational analysis with qualitative insights, reflects TIPI’s goal of bridging research and practice in understanding technology’s societal impacts.
- Maya Blitch – Families Communicating Resilience in the Face of Disaster
The aim of this project is to understand the complexities of how families navigate natural disasters. This study seeks to understand the questions of (1) how families are resilient during natural disasters, (2) how they organize, and (3) the impact of their survival stories on their organization and resilience process. Ultimately, this study aims to understand stories, organization, past resilience, as well as future resilience practices.
The goals of TIPI, as outlined by their mission, are to create meaningful work, shape policy, and work towards digital inclusion. My proposed project aims to understand how families actively navigate a natural disaster. This includes understanding how they use technology during the disaster itself. This is incredibly timely research. Additionally, given that this study plans to use screenshots of real messages during a disaster, it can potentially understand how more micro-level groups actively use technology during disaster events. This research aims to improve families’ lives by understanding what has helped them be successful and what has made surviving dangerous events challenging, thus speaking to the core of TIPI. This research is set apart from other disaster and crisis work as it focuses on families engaging in communication with and through communication channels during a disaster event.
- Siyi Song– Investigating Influence of AI Opinion Summaries vs. User-Generated Content on Opinion Formation
This project explores how AI-generated opinion summaries influence user attitudes and perceptions of public opinion on social media platforms. The research is particularly interested in scenarios where these AI summaries either agree or disagree with user-generated posts.
TIPI focuses on research that advances understanding of technology’s role in society, particularly regarding information dissemination and policy implications. This project aligns with TIPI’s mission by investigating how AI technologies shape public discourse, trust, and decision-making processes on social media platforms—critical areas for technology policy development.
These projects represent a diverse range of research that aligns with TIPI’s mission to investigate the social impacts of digital media, growing concerns around disasters and risk, and artificial-intelligence in the future of work. We are excited to support these talented researchers as they embark on their projects and look forward to the valuable insights they will bring to the field.