About
Dr. Brian C. Britt is an associate professor whose research primarily focuses on the intersection between organizational communication and new media, with a particular emphasis on the co-constructed communicative structures and evolution of large-scale online organizations. As a computational social scientist, Dr. Britt connects large-scale data collection and management approaches with innovative statistical analyses, applying existing methods and developing entirely new approaches to address social scientific problems and contexts that would otherwise be intractable.
Beyond the University
The communicative structures on which Dr. Britt’s research focuses emerge across topics including advertising, public relations, health, the environment, geopolitics, and so forth, such that his work provides insights that are salient across disciplines while also resolving knowledge gaps at their intersections. By combining computational methods with communication theory, Dr. Britt produces insights that are valuable for scholars, policymakers, industry professionals, designers of digital platforms, and the general public. His research helps organizations understand how online networks grow and change over time, as well as how participation, influence, and social cohesion manifest within digital platforms. To address these novel research contexts and phenomena, Dr. Britt has devised several new analysis methods that leverage emerging technologies and address longstanding scholarly limitations, and he has developed and released open source software to conduct these analyses, providing fellow researchers across disciplines with the means to effectively examine diverse communication systems as they emerge.
A Passion for Teaching and Communication
Dr. Britt routinely teaches undergraduate and graduate courses such as Computational Research Methods, Quantitative Research Methods, and Social Networks, preparing students to derive insights from communication activities in a rapidly evolving media sphere and future-proofing their knowledge and skill sets in preparation for further societal developments in the years to come. He emphasizes analytical rigor and ethical inquiry, honing capabilities that are independent of specific software and resources, and broadly fostering the ability to draw meaningful conclusions from complex data. His mentorship builds students’ confidence as scholars and professionals, equipping them with the skills needed to conduct high-quality research and to understand social and behavioral processes across diverse and dynamically evolving communication contexts.