Kokil Jaidka

Associate Professor of Computational Communication
Department of Communications and New Media · National University of Singapore

About

I am an Associate Professor of Computational Communication at the National University of Singapore, with an affiliate position at the NUS Institute of Data Sciences. My research develops computational models of language to measure and understand computer-mediated communication — particularly how social media shapes political behaviour, wellbeing, and public discourse.

Previously, I was a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at NTU (2018–2019) and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania working with Prof. Lyle Ungar on the World Wellbeing Project (2016–2018). Before academia, I spent three years as a Senior Computer Scientist at Adobe Research, where I co-invented nine patents in digital marketing and natural language processing.

I am the Programme Coordinator for the Master's in Data Communication at NUS, and Principal Investigator on grants totalling over S$25 million, including a Ministry of Education Tier 3 grant on Digital Information Resilience.

Computational Language Models Platform Auditing Political Communication Wellbeing & Public Health

The postings on this site are my own and do not represent the position or opinions of the Department of Communications and New Media, NUS.

Recognition & Grants

💰
S$25M+ Research Portfolio
PI on grants including
MOE Tier 3 & Facebook Integrity Award
9 US patents granted
🏆
IAMCR Decolonising the Digital Award
International Association for
Media and Communication Research
2025
🏅
Best Senior PC, ICWSM
Multiple years · 2021–2025
AAAI New Faculty Highlights (2021)
Best Poster — NY Academy of Sciences (2019)
MOE Tier 3
Digital Information Resilience
Ministry of Education · 2023–2028 · Project PI
Large-scale research programme on resilience against digital misinformation.
CATOS
Online Hate Speech Detection
2025–2027
A taxonomic approach to multilingual and cross-cultural hate speech detection.
USD $100,000
Facebook Integrity Foundation Award
2019 · co-PI
Effects of social network affordances on political discourse.
Fellowship & Start-Up
Nanyang Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship & NUS Start-Up Grant
NTU · 2018  |  NUS · 2020

Research

🤖
Computational Language Models
Measuring affect, discussion quality, and wellbeing in online communication using NLP and machine learning.
ACL · EMNLP · AAAI
🔍
Platform Auditing
Studying how social media design and algorithmic features — shadowbans, affordances, hiding likes — shape discourse and equity.
ICWSM · Nature Human Behaviour · JoC
🧪
Field Experiments
Running experiments with custom-built social media apps to improve the health of online communication.
JCMC · Political Communication · PNAS

Selected Publications

NLP & AI Models
Platform Auditing & Political Communication
Wellbeing & Public Health

Full list on Google Scholar.  9 US patents granted.

Service