Jason Young

My work explores the intersection between technology, knowledge systems, and power. I am interested in understanding how technological practices — from the use of social media and AI to the spread of disinformation — are leveraged to make different kinds of knowledge are made visible (or made invisible) and given authority (or marginalized). My research asks, for example, how the use of information & communication technologies are re-shaping colonial hierarchies that exist between Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge systems, and how socio-cultural dynamics produce vulnerabilities and attachments to misinformation. My projects strongly emphasize community-based, participatory approaches with applied goals, but are also inspired by and draw from a broad range of postcolonial, feminist, and critical theories.

In addition to my research, I am the Director of the Technology & Social Change Group (TASCHA). TASCHA is a multidisciplinary center whose research explores the relationship between digital technologies and society, with an emphasis on applied work grounded in community engagement. One of our primary missions is to build and support a community of practice at the iSchool that is interested in critically interrogating the complex and rapidly changing relationship between technology, society, and the environment. In this pursuit, we provide space and resources for students, faculty, and researchers to come together to collectively experiment with methods and processes that support ethical collaborations and cutting-edge, community-based research. Please reach out if you are interested in engaging with TASCHA!

I am open to accepting a PhD student for the 2025-2026 cohort – please do reach out to me if you are interested in working together and thinking about applying to the iSchool! I am particularly interested in admitting students that seek to do research in the areas of digital knowledge politics and nature/society relationships, or that have interest in one of my active projects below:

Indigenous Connectivity – This project seeks to design and implement community networks for and with Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon. It explores the ways in which digital technologies produce new opportunities for Indigenous communities to engage in collective environmental politics and cultural regeneration, while simultaneously reproducing epistemic and colonial hierarchies within those politics.

Indigenous Wellbeing in the Arctic – This project supports interdisciplinary and interepistemological research into Arctic Indigenous wellbeing, with the goal of developing educational resources that communities can use to support
develops culturally-specific educational resources that Arctic communities can use to support their own wellbeing and resilience.

Co-Designing for Trust – This NSF-funded project is a collaboration between academic and community researchers, librarians, educators, and other partners working to design community-oriented solutions to misinformation. The project seeks to create locally-contextualized digital literacy resources that holistically address the ways that misinformation exploits our minds, emotions, and social circumstances.