Hi, I’m Naiyan. Or as most people call me, Nay.

I am an independent researcher and a data analyst at the Office for National Statistics (ONS). My research interests include social media platforms and online communities.

Currently I am collaborating internationally with several American academics on research projects involving the social media platform Reddit. At the same time I am also building my data science skills, particularly with natural language processing.

Current projects

Reddit literature review and ethics project

Building on my previous experience I am involved in a multipart project on Reddit. Firstly a systematic literature review of Reddit and secondly a paper on the ethical use of Reddit data in research. The literature review covers bibliographic details, study keywords, research topics, subreddits studied, whether the study was primarily about Reddit, a description of the data used, the method of data capture, type of analysis, and an overview of how ethics are discussed. My co-authors for these projects are Nicholas Proferes, Michael Zimmer, Sarah Gilbert and Casey Fiesler.

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Reddit health meta-analysis

There are several health studies on Reddit which have investigated topics ranging from depression, urology and experiences of neo-natal care. This study will synthesise, statistically analyse and combine the results from identified studies to gain further insights. This study is in collaboration with Dr Rebecca Britt from the University of Alabama who specialises in health communications.

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Fashion brand sentiment and popularity on Reddit

Using social media data from across several of Reddit’s fashion communities I am investigating the most popular fashion brands over time using machine learning. I am using Python to conduct sentiment analysis and topic modelling to identify how brands are discussed and their popularity approximately over 10 years.

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Blog posts

Click any of the below categories to see all my previous blog posts on that topic

Reddit

Academic blogging on Reddit. Articles, papers, digital methods and commentary.

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Politics and policymaking

British politics, policy and policy making. Occassional humour article.

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Technology

Covering programming, machine learning, and everything else.

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Fashion

Articles on online fashion, the fashion industry and random thoughts.

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Health

Discussion of the Covid-19 pandemic and other health adjacent issues.

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Personal and Misc.

Sharing hobbies old and new. This is where I try to show I’m not a total dork.

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