I am a university professor at UH and a media anthropologist who is interested in interactivity, television, emergent technology (in general), and artificial intelligence (specifically). I am also a usability researcher (UX). My first book Push the Button: Interactive Television and Collaborative Journalism in Japan (forthcoming) examines the post-Fukushima tensions in the Japanese journalism and television industries and seeks to account for the ways that media professionals are responding to increasingly skeptical and distracted audiences. I also track the global debut of interactive television in Japan– a cutting-edge fusion of mediums that represented the most dramatic departure from existing television technology in several decades. I was interested in examining how the concept and practice of participation change as technology evolves the means by which people can contribute.
Currently, I am working on a project at the intersection of artificial intelligence/machine learning and user experience (UX). Partnering with UX researchers and designers in companies both in the U.S. and Japan, I am exploring what it means to think about usability when we’re attempting to replicate human interaction via machine.
Education
Ph.D., Anthropology - Rice University
M.A., Social Sciences - University of Chicago
M.A. Media Studies - New School University
B.A., New Media Theory - Brown University
Research Areas
Media anthropology
UX
Usability
Anthropology of Work
Television
Journalism
Interactivity
Collaborative Media
Artificial Intelligence
Machine learning
Data Science
Creative Writing
Japan and the United States.
![](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/b9d78a_be8786fd8a2045ea92bd9e8433d91a72~mv2.jpg/v1/crop/x_8,y_0,w_585,h_767/fill/w_585,h_767,al_c,q_85,enc_auto/liz%20rodwell.jpg)