A Former Financial Journalist turned Media & Communications Scholar
Critical EdTech Studies, AI/Data ethics, Datafied Education, Social Justice
Doctoral Researcher at Simon Fraser University
Saemi Nadine Jung, Doctoral Researcher,
Digital Democracies Institute,
Simon Fraser University
EdTech/AI-data ethics/Communications
PhD scholar, Researcher, Author, Speaker, and Educator.
School of Communication, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada
Former financial journalist turned media & communications scholar with 10+ years of work experiences in NYC, Chicago, London, and Seoul. I am an impact-oriented media & communications specialist with an extensive background of financial journalism, political economy of tech, media and comms analysis, and passionate about social justice.
Research Interests
Saemi is a social justice-oriented, interdisciplinary thinker of media and communications. She worked as a financial news anchor for about than 10 years prior to her doctoral research. With 10+ years of work experiences in NYC, Chicago, London, and Seoul, it was natural for her to incorporate a transnational, decolonial, and comparative approach to her research.
Saemi's research areas are largely at the intersection of political economy of platform technologies, critical data studies, issues of social justice and digital communication culture.
Her recent research projects are focused on tech and power, surveillance/dataveillance, platformization of work, AI/data ethics, and datafied education.
Current Research Projects
Thesis Project (2024-2027): Examine the growing role of technologies in public education setting by analyzing a case study of South Korea's "AI-Digital Textbook (AIDT)" initative.
- This research includes ethnographic fieldwork, digital ethnography and discourse analysis of educaitonal policy documents and news reports around the "Digital Driven Reform Initative."
2024 Project (conducted at the Digital Democracies Institute): Explore the role of conflict and authenticity in environment in which mis/disinformation about bio-manufactured products such as COVID-19 vaccine circulates and where public trust is limited.
- This research takes 2-pronged approach: 1) historical analysis and 2) research persona method.
2023-2024 Project (conducted at the Digital Democracies Institute): Keypunch operating as Mind-numbing Refuge for Korean Canadian Immigrant Women
- Through interviews and archival research, we delve into the daily work and lives of first-generation Korean Canadian immigrants. Based on the interviews and archival materials, we argue that keypunch operation is an early form of workplace gamification—albeit one in which advancing to the next level was impossible.
2023 Project: Understand Precarity (UP-BC Precarity Project) (April - August, 2023)
- This is a 6-year long joint research initiative by Simon Fraser University, Canadian Centre for Policy Initiative and BC Federation of Labour to understand work precarity across BC. I worked with gig workers in the ride hailing and food delivery sectors to shed light on their lived experiences of working with platform companies like Uber and Lyft. The research highlighted the systemic issues in this sector and will be used to guide political advocacy to improve wages, employment standards, and health and safety. For more: https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2022LBR0014-001591.
2022 Project: Research on platform policies and building a communication resilience-model in organizations hit by the global pandemic
2021 Project: COVID-19: A Communication Crisis – Ethics, Privacy, Inequalities.
- This was a collaborative research project between faculty, PhD researchers and Master’s students involving the conduct of research across countries on the representation of COVID-19, especially in relation to inequalities.
- We used quantitative and qualitative audio-visual content and coding analysis to analyze 15 different national mediascapes in three periods of the pandemic - April 2020 (the outbreak), October 2020 (rising second wave) and January 2021 (path to recovery).
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