Christy J. Khoury is a Ph.D. candidate at the iSchool and a 2024 Research Excellence Doctoral Fellow. Christy’s research, situated in the crisis informatics space, uses a sociotechnical perspective to examine the uses of TikTok for sensemaking of and resiliency to crises that occurred in Lebanon. Her dissertation uses a mixed-methods approach, including visual social semiotic, content, statistical, and text analyses, to explore TikTok as a contemporary crisis communication tool. She has also researched Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to examine discourse centered around crisis and non-crisis contexts with the Network Influence and Information Curation (NIIC) lab. Overall, her research takes on a user-informed approach to consider the interaction between users and technology in a time of uncertainty. Her research endeavors are rooted in a transnational, information ethics lens that mirrors her pedagogical perspectives. At the iSchool, she has taught IST 343 Data in Society and IST 719 Information Visualization. She obtained her Certification in University Teaching (CUT) in 2023, and an Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award in 2024. To learn more about her teaching philosophy and experiences, check out her portfolio.
Prior to the Ph.D. program, Christy obtained her B.B.A., with an emphasis in Information Systems, from the University of Washington, Seattle and her MSIM and CAS in Information Security Management from the Syracuse iSchool. She obtained industry experience as a risk and management consultant for KPMG, where she collaborated on and led projects for clients including Weyerhaeuser, Alaska Airlines, Costco, T-Mobile, Microsoft, and others. To chat, please email at cjkhoury@syr.edu or connect via LinkedIn.