Join us as we host a provocative discussion surrounding the use of AI in ethnographic research, writing, and dissemination. This interactive session will host guest speakers, Zhuofan Li from the Department of Sociology at Virginia Tech, and Gabriele de Seta, researcher at the University of Bergen, and engage in audience participation around a series of pre-established questions about emerging AI technologies and their impact in our field.
This panel is moderated by Dr. Jeff Lane and Dr. Yonaira (Yoni) Rivera from the Rutgers Digital Ethnography Working Group.
Zhuofan Li is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Virginia Tech. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Arizona in 2024. His current research helps us understand digital society and its relationship with capitalism, knowledge, and power through an interesting paradox called corporate open science. He has also studied the moralized market for surveillance technology, the role of temporality in motivating and stratifying action in cancer clinics, and the promises and perils of machine learning for collecting and analyzing network, text, visual, and geospatial data, among others.
Gabriele de Seta is, technically, a sociologist. He is a Researcher at the University of Bergen, where he leads the ALGOFOLK project (“Algorithmic folklore: The mutual shaping of vernacular creativity and automation”) funded by a Trond Mohn Foundation Starting Grant (2024-2028). Gabriele holds a PhD from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica and at the University of Bergen, where he was part of the ERC-funded project “Machine Vision in Everyday Life”. His research work, grounded on qualitative and ethnographic methods, focuses on digital media practices, sociotechnical infrastructures and vernacular creativity in the Chinese-speaking world. He is also interested in experimental, creative and collaborative approaches to knowledge-production.
Jeffrey Lane is an Associate Professor of Communication at Rutgers University. He studies communication and technology use as it relates to urban life, work, criminal justice, and youth culture. He develops and employs urban and digital ethnographic methods to examine up-close how people find community and meaning in their lives. Lane is the author of "The Digital Street" (Oxford University Press, 2019), which received the Nancy Baym Book Award from the Association of Internet Researchers and the Best Book Award from the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Section of the American Sociological Association. Lane’s current ethnographic fieldwork examines micromobility in the South Bronx. Lane’s research also encompasses a variety of collaborative, team-based projects using surveys and mixed methods to examine issues including youth exposure to gun violence in online and offline settings and the impacts of social media on teenagers and parents in N.J. He serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Children and Media and Mobile Media & Communication. His research has been published in Journal of Communication, American Behavioral Scientist, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, and New Media & Society, and written about in The Atlantic, New York Times, and New York Magazine. Lane’s research has been funded by the New Jersey Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation.
Yonaira “Yoni” M. Rivera is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Rutgers University. Her scholarship focuses on reducing health inequities and improving the well-being of Latino/a/x and underserved communities through health communication initiatives. She specifically focuses on understanding how engagement with health information on social media may impact health decisions, ensures access to multilingual and culturally-relevant health information, and facilitates community engagement through digital spaces. Rivera has received funding from the National Cancer Institute, including an F31 Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award and a Loan Repayment Program Award in health disparities research. She was a 2024 Douglass College Faculty Equity Fellow and received the 2025 Department of Communication Excellence in Teaching Award. She has published her work in leading communication and public health journals, including the Journal of Communication, Health Communication, and JMIR. Rivera’s current projects include developing community-led, culturally relevant, multilingual health communication interventions for Latino/a/x audiences, and exploring the role social media platforms play in facilitating health communication efforts among community leaders in Puerto Rico. She also studies how LLMs can communicate health information in accessible, reliable, and culturally sensitive ways. Rivera is an associate member of the Cancer Prevention & Control Program and member of the Center for Cancer Health Equity at the Rutgers Cancer Institute. She is also a core faculty member of the Rutgers Global Health Institute and affiliated faculty for the Rutgers Center for Latin American Studies.