People
University of Waterloo
Shana MacDonald
Co-Director, SIGNAL
Shana MacDonald's interdisciplinary research examines feminist, queer, and anti-racist media activism within social and digital media, as well as the rise of online hate, technology-facilitated gender-based violence, radicalization, social polarization online. Her digital media research employs critical humanities and computational analysis to study media and communication environments from a feminist perspective. This work builds important bridges between media studies and digital humanities highlighting digital media’s impact on everyday lives and our socio-cultural worlds. As O’Donovan Chair in Communication Across the Disciplines she builds opportunities for students, researchers, and the public to gather together and imagine equitable practices and collaborative approaches for building more socially just communication environments.
Recent Work
Learn more about Shana. → Google Scholar
University of Waterloo
Brianna I. Wiens
Co-Director, SIGNAL
Brianna I. Wiens's research examines how digital platforms, algorithms, and media cultures structure gendered power, with particular focus on how misogyny, disinformation, and reactionary politics circulate online. She develops feminist digital and rhetorical methods that trace how platforms encode and amplify cultural narratives. Her current scholarship on "machine learning misogyny" examines how automated systems reproduce and intensify gendered violence through recommendation engines, deepfakes, and algorithmic personalization. Wiens also analyzes how feminist communities mobilize storytelling and collaborative digital activism to resist online harms. Leading several funded initiatives, her work bridges critical analysis, public-facing tools, and care-centered collaboration to advance more equitable technological futures.
Recent Work
Learn more about Bri. → Google Scholar
York University
Nick Ruest
Co-Director, SIGNAL
Nick Ruest is a librarian and researcher whose research has centered on developing and supporting computational tools and methodologies for web archives, as well as creating data collection and analysis pipelines, with a particular focus on digital preservation infrastructure that enables the study of feminist media, social justice movements, and web history at scale.
Recent Work
Learn more about Nick. → Google Scholar
University of Ottawa
Jada Watson
Co-Director, SIGNAL
Jada Watson’s research explores the potential of using discographic and biographic metadata to learn more about how popular music genres form, develop, and evolve throughout history. The principal investigator of the SongData project (www.SongData.ca), she is developing approaches for using information about songs and artists to explore the connections between musicians and the broader socio-cultural and institutional frameworks that govern genres. The database and dataset in development for this project will serve as the foundation of a long-term research program that seeks to use computational techniques to frame musicological inquiries about country music’s geo-cultural history, as well as issues regarding gender representation and changes in musical style.
Recent Work