Active Research Projects
Climate Change & Latino Communities
Conducting interviews and focus groups with Latinx communities in the U.S. about climate change and adaptation strategies. We are expanding this research to new communities in Puerto Rico, the U.S., Latin America and Africa.
by Maria Elena Villar & Tommy Zhu
Correlation between online hate speech and offline action
Exploring the nexus between the increase in online hate speech and the increase in the incident of hate related crimes. Through analysis of social media posts, we developed lexicons to aid in the design of Natural Language Models (NLM) that can detect hate speech online before its transmogrification offline.
by Abdulhameed Olaitan Ridwanullah
Breaking the stigmas around mental health
Exploring the cultural and generational stigmas around mental health illnesses, the struggles of international students and immigrants, and how mental health illnesses portrayed in different mediums.
By Filiz Durgun
Cho!ces
Expanding on a serious game that was developed for bystander intervention of sexual assault among youth. MEILAB members are working to update the scenarios for a college context and test it with Northeastern students.
by Maria Elena Villar & Filiz Durgun
Digitization and counterculture: Provocative worldmaking on social media
Investigating how the the adoption of social media has been instrumental to the rise of counterculture in conservative societies and how the victims have leveraged on social media affordances to create a digital identity for themselves within the conservative environment.
by Abdulhameed Olaitan Ridwanullah
Previous Projects by Lab Members
Por Nuestras Calles: game (Through Our Streets)
Stigma reduction and bystander intervention of commercial sexual exploitation of children and adolescents in Colombia.
Board Game Design
Transformed digital mechanics into an analog game, demonstrating its potential to create learning opportunities within the framework of serious games.
FACES: fotonovelas and radio stories
Reducing stigma of seeking mental health services among Hispanic and Haitian immigrant families.