Shama Patel
Faculty Fellow
Joined Stern 2024
Leonard N. Stern School of Business
Kaufman Management Center
44 West Fourth Street, KMC 8
New York, NY 10012
E-mail sp8533@stern.nyu.edu
Biography
Shama Patel joined the Stern School of Business as Assistant Professor/Post-Doctoral Fellow upon receiving the NYU Provost Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2024.
Patel’s research explores how digital media shapes civic and political participation and the influence of artificial intelligence (AI) on shaping individual perspectives and actions. Her PhD research on the extraordinary response to the George Floyd video investigated how digital media organized a global movement as a digitally mediatized affective contagion and sheds light on how digital media both shapes and is shaped by civic engagement. Her research on digital memes analyzes how meme-driven engagement influences political campaigns. By unpacking memes as both intentional modifications and cultural contagions spread through AI-driven algorithmic systems, she conceptualizes political campaigns as dynamic memetic contagions where meaning-making and collective emotion are continually constructed and negotiated. Patel’s work introduces new approaches for interpreting the organizational role of digital media by devising innovative methodological frameworks that incorporate generative AI to interpret large volumes of online content. Patel’s current research examines how generative AI models are shaping the creation, dissemination, interpretation, and emotional response to digital media and explores the implications for developing an AI mindset that engages with these technologies responsibly and ethically.
Patel brings extensive experience in leading digital transformation and organizational change at Fortune 500 and entrepreneurial firms. As the founder of Drive Change, she has assisted business leaders in driving technological change from ideation to implementation. Additionally, she has held leadership positions at United Airlines, Accenture, and PricewaterhouseCoopers, where she delivered large-scale digital transformation initiatives.
Patel holds a Ph.D. in Digitalization from the Copenhagen Business School, an M.S. in Computer Science from Northern Illinois University, and a B.S. in Geology from Delhi University.
Research Interests
- Digital Media
- Affective Contagion
- Artificial Intelligence
- Memes/Memetics
- Socio-Political Change
- Digital Transformation
Academic Background
PhD, Digitalization
Copenhagen Business School
MS, Computer Science
Northern Illinois University
BS, Geology
Delhi University
Selected Publications
Patel, Shama (2023)
The Summer of 2020: Situating Digital Media in Scaling Affective Contagion: A Case of the George Floyd Video
PhD Dissertation, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Digitization, Copenhagen, Denmark
Knudsen, Britta Timm and Shama Patel (2023)
Digital Media Revitalising Colonial Heritage: The George Floyd Video Translocalized in Denmark
International Journal of Heritage Studies 29 (10): 1041–60
Patel, Shama and John Postill (2023)
How to Do a Digital Epidemiography
In An Ethnographic Inventory: Field Devices for Anthropological Inquiry, 1st ed., 62–72 London
Patel, Shama and Mattias Tinghøj Hansen (2022)
Material-Affective Assemblage Thinking in Researching Scalar Phenomena
In International Conference on Information Systems
Patel, Shama, Abayomi Baiyere, and Christian Garmaan Johnsen (2022)
Beyond Practice: Assemblage Thinking in Sociomateriality Research
In European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS)
Patel, Shama and Ionna Constantiou (2020)
Human Agency in the Propagation of False Information - A Conceptual Framework
In European Conference on Information Studies (ECIS)