Margaret Yee Man Ng
Ng (Ph.D., UT Austin) is an Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, with appointments in the Department of Journalism and the Institute of Communications Research. She employs computational methods to analyze large-scale unstructured data, studying social media, technology use, and information diffusion. Her work focuses on three distinctive yet interrelated areas: user behavior, embedded structures, and content framing. Her current research investigates the lifecycle of social media platforms and the causes and consequences of user migration.
Ng worked closely with United Nations Global Pulse, an innovation initiative of the UN Secretary-General to harness big data and emerging communication technologies for sustainable development and humanitarian action. Before earning a Ph.D., she worked as a news artist at National Geographic Magazine and The Seattle Times and a data reporter for The Center for Public Integrity. During her doctoral study, she was an advanced analytics intern at Pew Research Center’s Data Labs.
Featured work
Ng, Y.M.M., & Ray, R. (2025). The journalists’ exodus: Navigating the transition from Twitter to Mastodon and other alternative platforms. New Media & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251321165
Ng, Y.M.M. (2023). Twitter intermittent and permanent discontinuance: A multi-method approach to study innovation diffusion. Computers in Human Behavior, 138, 107482. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2022.107482
Ng, Y.M.M., Hoffmann Pham, K., & Luengo-Oroz, M. (2023). Exploring YouTube’s recommendation system in the context of COVID-19 vaccines: Computational and comparative analysis of video trajectories. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 25, e49061. https://doi.org/10.2196/49061
Ng, Y.M.M. (2020). Re-examining the innovation post-adoption process: The case of Twitter discontinuance. Computers in Human Behavior, 103, 48–56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.09.019
Ng, Y.M.M., & Taneja, H. (2019). Mapping user-centric Internet geographies: How similar are countries in their web use patterns?. Journal of Communication, 69(5), 467–489. https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqz030
