About Ryland Shaw

Ryland is a Graduate of the University of Utah and an MA student researcher in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University, as well as a Pre-Doctoral Research Assistant at Microsoft Research New England’s Social Media Collective. His work-in-progress MA thesis assesses TikTok as a platform for climate crisis communication, while developing methods to better understand these highly algorithmic and navigationally obfuscated digital platforms. He has contributed to numerous interdisciplinary research projects related to environmental communication and digital social science research methods. Ryland is a leader within his graduate school community, having served as Graduate Caucus Co-chair, Student-Faculty Seminar facilitator, as an integral member to the 2022 and 2023 Conduits Graduate Conference

Organizing Committees, and as the co-founder of the university-wide Climate Communication Grad Student Working Group. He is at home in creative spaces like SFU’s Media & Maker Commons, where he worked as an instructor for two years. Ryland has volunteered the past several years with Kids Eat and Kids Read having designed the informational video for both of these charities. His insightful input into the Kids Read program is invaluable to us.