Associate Professor of Commerce
Area Coordinator—Information Technology & Innovation
University of Virginia School of Commerce

Faculty Lead, Digital Technology for Democracy Lab
University of Virginia Karsh Institute of Democracy

Faculty Affiliate, Thriving Youth in a Digital Environment
University of Virginia

Steven sitting at his work desk at University of Virginia

What do I do as an
Associate Professor of Commerce?

  • Teach courses including Managerial View of AI (Spring 2024 syllabus) and Race in Commerce

  • Read, think, collect and analyze data, write, and do a lot of editing that eventually ends up in published research papers

  • Provide service to the Information Systems discipline, including:

    • Associate Editor at Information Systems Research

    • As Program-Chair Elect for the Communications, Digital Technology, and Organizations (CTO) division of Academy of Management (AOM), plan and superve the Division’s pre-conference program at the 2025 Annual Meeting (e.g., Professional Development Workshop (PDW) and Doctoral Consortium)

    • Track Co-Chair, ICIS 2025 (Nashville, Tennessee)

  • As Area Coordinator, provide oversight of faculty affairs, area curricular content, and various administrative and outreach functions for the Information Technology & Innovation Area.

Research Recognition

  • Association for Information Systems
    Distinguished Member, Cum Laude

  • 2021 - Distinguished Winner of “Responsible Research in Management” Award

  • 2021 - Association for Information Systems (AIS) Senior Scholar Best Paper Award

  • 2021 - First Runner-Up AOM OCIS Division Best Published Paper

  • 2021 - University of Virginia Research Achievement Award

  • 2020 - MISQ Best Paper Award

  • 2020 - First Runner-Up AOM OCIS Division Best Published Paper.

  • 2018 - AOM OCIS Division Best Conference Paper Award

  • 2018 - Prix académique de la recherche en management

  • 2015 - OCIS Division Best Published Paper

Teaching

Teaching college students is a true delight! I have taught numerous undergraduate and graduate courses on topics including systems and strategy, business analytics, and information technology management. In Spring, 2025, I will once again teach these courses

Areas of Expertise

  • Online communities, social media, open innovation

  • Social network analysis, computational linguistics, and computational social science

  • Societal impacts of digital technology

  • Platform-mediated communication, content moderation, and context-specific toxic content categorization

  • Bias, fairness, and diversity in platforms, artificial intelligence, and machine learning

My research in published in top IS and management journals

MIS Quarterly,
Organization Science,
Information Systems Research, Information & Organization,
and Harvard Business Review

Research

My research research adopts a sociotechnical systems perspective that considers how the intersection of technology, people, processes, and data impacts individuals, organizations, and society. I explore how digital technology enables the discovery, creation, and sharing of information including:

  • In online communities and other social media that support open innovation,

  • Through applications of social network analysis, computational linguistics, and computational social science methods to analyze language use, team dynamics, and large voluntary collectives,

  • In content moderation, toxic content, and algorithmic content prioritization,

  • The role of race, gender, and diversity in algorithms, outcomes, and online experiences, and

  • Societal impacts of digital technology such as information-limiting environments (echo chambers and filter bubbles), the climate crisis, and ethical use of technology.

My ongoing collaborations encompass questions on:

  • How digital technology supports democracy through the distribution and discovery of digital information—including by enabling self-expression, access to high-quality information, connections with others with similar interests, and the voluntary exchange of goods and services.

  • The role of digital technology in healthy youth development, including why and when youth are alternatively benefiting from or harmed by their digital environment.

  • How individuals and organizations can benefit from using AI (including GenAI and LLM); how to minimize bias and promote fairness in AI/ML deployments; and, using LLM for context-aware toxic content identification.

  • I live in Charlottesville, Virginia

  • I’ve worked at the University of Virginia since 2015

  • I worked at Temple University from 2008-2015

  • I earned a Ph.D. in Information Systems from the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business (‘08)

  • Pre-academia, I worked over a decade for a variety of high-tech companies

  • I have a degree in computer science (‘88) and an MBA (‘93) from William & Mary

  • I grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina

A little bit more about me