Dan Faltesek

profile photo

Dan Faltesek

Associate Professor
School of Communication

Snell Hall 030c
2150 SW Jefferson Way
Corvallis, OR 97331
United States

Credentials
PhD Communication Studies, The University of Iowa, 2011
Research/Career Interests

Overview

PhD Comm Studies, Iowa. Rank: associate professor with tenure. I have been coordinator of New Media Communications since 2016, director of the GameLab since 2012, co-chair general education 2022-2024. My research is in Cultural Analytics.

I am interested in how we can use computational methods to find creative answers to questions that we thought we answered, especially when inventing new tools or techniques are involved. The name on my position when I was hired was "assistant professor of social media" which is fitting for me. The Twitter API was insidious, there is so much excitement about research in the post-Twitter world.

Active Research Projects

  • Augmenting social network methods with neural networks (or other machine learning classifiers) trained to model real human semantic judgments
  • Cascade social media attacks and inter-media agenda setting - Publication
  • Research methods in spaces featuring strategic/adversarial actors - Bioweapons Propaganda Research
  • Markov Chain Methods in Critical Social Research (especially in regard to TikTok)
  • Computer Vision/Image Processing methods for the analysis of the visual dimensions of social media events - Publication software to accomplish this research in R: ImagePlotR
  • Deployment and evaluation of advanced advertising modalities for Snapchat and Pinterest
  • Agent-based models of communication systems

Places to Find My Work

I have been known to blog on Medium, a lot of research findings that won't be headed for journals end up there. My code generally ends up on GitHub. Social contact: Mastodon: [email protected], or find me on Instagram. I am also on Threads. My webpage.

Selling Social Media, my book. 

Recent interviews: RiA podcast, VICE, Daily Beast, Slate, Futurism, Fortune, Toward Data Science, KGW, Wall Street Journal

What do I teach?

Not all classes are in all modalities, I typically teach two classes per term. My slate of courses includes/has included:

  • NMC 101 Introduction to New Media
  • NMC 240 Survey of Social Media (now taught by X. Lu)
  • NMC 245 Cultural Analytics and Data Science - all class assets on GitHub 
  • NMC 260 New Media Futures - open-access textbook 
  • NMC 340 Social Media Strategy (now taught by X. Lu)
  • NMC 399 (special topics): Small Screens (a class on developing specialty web and AR products, taught as a one-week experience 2013-2019).
  • NMC 399 (special topics): Cultural Analytics 2
  • NMC 470 Media Law (with an intellectual property emphasis)

I am associated with the MA in Communication, have served on graduate committees in Public Health and Engineering, and would be happy to talk to you about your thesis/dissertation.

I lead a PLC on exam design (design of formative exams), several CTL events, UCF's BlendKit, and more.  My instructional focus is on creating high-intensity student-student interactions (especially simulations and games) on a regular basis, within appropriate context.