Teaching

Academia

I have been a lead instructor for the “Digital Technology and Disruptive Change” course at Rutgers University. I have taught this course every semester since Fall 2023, and have received standout ratings. Here’s a sample of what students in my class 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.”

Digital Tech and Disruptive Change, Fall 2023
Digital Technology and Disruptive Change, Spring 2024
  • 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 of 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 service, and leading the election coverage from the US, so I was in the thick of this context anyway. Wrapped it all up and plunged right into the PhD program at Rutgers!