Thesis award recognises PhD graduate for significant research

The annual Information Systems Doctoral Thesis Award, sponsored by the Professors and Heads of Information Systems in New Zealand (PHIS-NZ), sees five theses from universities around Aotearoa New Zealand be nominated.

Dr Wanniarachchi’s research was commended by the judging panel as being of outstanding quality. Her work is considered a significant contribution to the information systems literature and practical implications, as it has the potential to inform policymakers around creating more inclusive online spaces.

In her thesis, Dr Wanniarachchi examined social media discourses on the platforms Twitter and Reddit to identify the patterns of fat stigmatising content, while exploring how male and female genders are positioned within the discourse. The study involved using natural language processing and machine learning techniques to analyse sentiments, emotions and discussion topics.

Dr Wanniarachchi says she was inspired to follow this line of work after previous research where she had observed the effect technology had on people’s emotions.

“With the rapid development of social media, different views are available on a larger scale and when that translates to comments on a person’s appearance, particularly weight, it can have a strong negative impact. These facts made me propose research to look further into identifying fat stigma patterns in social media.”

The study’s overall results indicated that most weight-related discussions on social media promote negativity. Dr Wanniarachchi says there were some results that surprised her.

“While the results showed that females experience more varied emotions and derogatory content related to fatness, it was revealed that males are also victims of body objectification within the social media context. In comparing Twitter and Reddit, Twitter was identified as containing more derogatory content targeting fat people than Reddit.”

The framework used in the research has formed new knowledge on hate speech detection in a social media context which Dr Wanniarachchi says can help improve the information systems research community.

“Mixed analytic approaches are rarely studied in the information systems discipline. The study provides a roadmap for conducting mixed-method analyses of unstructured social media data for gauging underpinning hate speech patterns.”

Dr Wanniarachchi’s achievements were recognised at the New Zealand Information Systems Doctoral Consortium in Canterbury earlier this month.

“I feel proud that my research has gained national-level recognition and am happy that the three-and-a-half years of hard work has paid off,” Dr Wanniarachchi says.

Her main doctoral supervisor Associate Professor Anuradha Mathrani says Dr Wanniarachchi is truly deserving of the award.

“It’s been a pleasure supervising Dr Wanniarachchi. She’s very self-driven and has showed much passion throughout her whole PhD research journey. Now, she is the first Massey PhD student to receive this award. I’d like to say a huge congratulations Vajisha, all your supervisors are very proud and look forward to seeing continued success in your career!”

Dr Wanniarachchi is originally from Sri Lanka where she completed her Bachelor of Science with Honours in Information and Communication Technology at the University of Colombo School of Computing (UCSC) before moving to Singapore. She worked as a research assistant at the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University for nearly four years which she says motivated her to continue her academic journey.

“The work I did as a research assistant grew my passion for research, so I searched for opportunities to pursue a PhD. I found Associate Professor Mathrani who had similar research interests and who has made my time at Massey extra special. She is the kind of supervisor that any PhD student would dream of.”

“Massey also provided a perfect environment for research and made my PhD journey comfortable. With the experience I gained as a researcher and with the tremendous support from my supervisors, I established a good foundation to build my research on. While collecting data for nearly two years and constructing the methodological framework was challenging, I enjoyed looking for answers and knowing I was creating new knowledge. Whether it’s big or small, it’s new and that’s what matters.”

Dr Wanniarachchi is now working as a Research Fellow at the University of Auckland. She says her journey so far has brought her many proud moments and taught her a lot.

“I am proud to be a recipient of the PHIS-NZ Doctoral Thesis Award as well as a recipient of the Dean’s List of Exceptional Theses. The past few years have been a time of discovering who I truly am and what I am capable of. It amazes me and I am proud of who I am today.”

The 34-year-old says she couldn’t have done it without those around her.

“I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to my supervisor Associate Professor Anuradha Mathrani, my co-supervisors Dr Teo Susnjak and Professor Chris Scogings from the School of Mathematical and Computational Sciences. I am gifted to have such a fantastic life partner in my husband Kalindu. He has given me tremendous support while I was studying. I would also like to thank my parents, my brother and my in-laws, who were very supportive in every way possible.”