👋 Thank you for stopping by! I’m Nikhila Natarajan, a youth and media researcher currently teaching at Rutgers University and Fairleigh Dickinson University. In 2025, I earned a PhD in Media Studies from the Rutgers School of Communication and Information. My dissertation conceptualizes teen agency in media use and contextualizes it within a unique period in development–a novel contribution to the field. I bring new vocabularies and frameworks to youth and media studies against the backdrop of what I call an “Ambient AI” media environment. When I finish work each day, you’ll find me on a nearby tennis court, surrounded by a sea of yellow tennis balls.
Youth Audience Researcher; PhD from Rutgers School of Communication
Scholarly Contribution
Impact
Research Publications
My research has been published in leading journals: International Journal of Communication (IJoC), Journal of Children and Media (JOCAM), and Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). The speed reads are below, and the articles are linked too, if you’d like a longer read.
If you like what you see here and want to connect, I would love to hear from you.
Academia
Teaching
I am currently teaching two undergraduate courses “Children and Media” and “Data in Context” in Fall 2025. Prior to this, I was the lead instructor for the “Digital Technology and Disruptive Change” course at Rutgers University. I taught this course every semester since Fall 2023, and have received standout ratings. Here’s what students in my classes are saying:
“Professor Niki has been an absolute pleasure to be a student of this semester! Her classes are always contemporary and very interesting for the class, and overall is a great professor!”
“The numerous examples she would provide to simplify a difficult concept really helped me understand.”
“The best part about the course was definitely Prof. Natajaran. She was always happy to see us and started class on a positive note.”
- Instructor, Digital Technology and Disruptive Change, Fall 2023, Spring 2024, Fall 2024, Rutgers School of Communication and Information.
- Lead Instructor, Managing Social Media Accounts For Clients, Spring 2024, Fairleigh Dickinson University.
- Awarded “Promising Professor,” at the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication Annual Conference, 2024.
Collaborations
Amy Jordan
Amy makes me a better researcher every day. I first met Amy during a PhD seminar in Fall 2021. The next afternoon, I walked over to Amy’s office and knocked on her door. That’s how our partnership began. Amy advised my first research project (How do teens insert “frictions” into social media’s infinite scroll?), published in the International Journal of Communication. Amy and I co-authored a commentary in the Journal of Children and Media–on 30 years of children’s media policy in the US. We also teamed up to co-write a successful grant proposal and launch the Teens, Family and Technology Lab at Rutgers.
Jeffrey Lane & Joyce Valenza
Jeff and Joyce are co-founders and colleagues at the Teens, Family and Technology Lab. Both are very special in my ‘network’ of mentors. Jeff is my go-to for the confluence of media, sociology, and ethnography; Joyce’s research-y energy is infectious. Jeff’s Quantitative methods class inspired by ICA debut, and in Joyce’s company, I launched data collection for my dissertation on a sun drenched summer afternoon in Atlantic City.
Shagun Jhaver
In the very first semester of my PhD coursework, I joined Shagun as a research assistant and plunged merrily into participant recruitment, semi-structured interviewing and coding on QDA software. Shagun introduced me to a wonderful team including Alice Qian Zhang, Quan Ze Chan, Ruotong Wang, and Amy X. Zhang; he pointed me to Eric Gilbert’s wonderful open access document for PhD hopefuls, which is such a pleasure to read in any season! Our collaboration resulted in my first peer-reviewed, co-authored publication on user perspectives to content moderation.
Book Project
“Phenomenal Woman: Kamala Harris”: I worked with author Chidanand Rajghatta on writing, research and editing for his timely book that launched right after the US 2020 elections. At the time, I was Consulting Editor for an Indian news wire, and leading the election coverage from the US, so I was in the thick of this book’s context at the time of writing. I wrapped it all up and plunged right into the PhD program at Rutgers.
Media
Long before AI became a catch-all headline, I have been tracking the rise of this technology from a variety of social science perspectives. This laid the groundwork for my eventual arrival into an R1 university to study the role of AI in the lives of young audiences. During my time in journalism and think tanks, I have interviewed the world’s most well known scholars in AI/technology research. Below is a showcase of some of my favorite conversations.
Awards
Starting with an ‘Outstanding Student’ award bestowed by the Media Studies faculty at the Rutgers School of Communication and Information (2023), I have been selected for three top awards that celebrate excellence in media scholarship. I won a best paper award from the Media Management and Entrepreneurship Division at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) annual conference, 2023; and ‘Promising Professor’ first place award at AEJMC 2024, in Philadelphia. The New York State Communication Association conference (2024) has chosen my peer reviewed article published in IJoC as the top graduate student paper.
“Promising Professor”
“The Promising Professor Awards honor new faculty and graduate students who demonstrate excellence and innovation in teaching.”
Best Paper: “How does email newsletter use predict customer acquisition and retention?”
Awarded by the Media Management and Entrepreneurship Division
Outstanding Student,
Media Studies
Awarded by the Media Studies PhD Faculty, Rutgers School of Communication and Information
My Story
Innovator | Traveler | Team Player
My story begins 10,000 miles away from the US East Coast. I grew up in the charming and historic city of Hyderabad, in southern India. My father worked as a civil engineer, my mother taught French in a K-12 school, my brother and I played cricket out on the street, and I loved riding pillion on our family’s Vespa scooter, the dust and wind in my face.
I played competitive tennis throughout school and college, studied Economics, attended journalism school and began work as a sports reporter at The Indian Express newspaper in New Delhi. From there, I took the scenic route, including a side gig as a civil construction site apprentice. I travelled to London and Scotland on a British Chevening scholarship, worked across print, broadcast, radio and digital newsrooms, and delivered bilingual reportage on breaking news stories from multiple geographies. I pioneered news livestreaming for India’s largest digital news site on a bootstrap budget long before legacy brands such as the BBC, The New York Times and others caught up with the possibilities of livestream technology for the news genre.
My work experience prior to my doctoral studies informs and inspires my research questions, methods, and the allure of audience research. I bring an exceptional combination of professional and people skills, and proven performance record to human centered research. Before my PhD, I earned an MS in Communications from Northwestern University and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Madras University.
Thanks for stopping by, and I look forward to connecting!
Gallery
Snapshots from my pivot into research
I coined a novel term: “frictions.”
Nikhila Natarajan, PhD 