Saloni Vaishnav

Year in School
Sophomore

Major

Research Interests
Interactive Computing Security and Privacy

Research Mentor
Prof. Camille Cobb

Research/Engagement Experience

Interests
I like to read books, run, occasionally paint, and have recently gotten into crocheting!

Project Title

How did I get interested in Computer Science?
My mom introduced me to coding, and from there, learning about the applications and how technology as a whole can impact humans made me even more interested in CS.

What social interests matter to me?
Promoting inclusivity and diversity is important to me, and making sure that people have equal access to basic technologies as well.

What is my most impactful college experience?
I was able to talk with a couple of professors and grad students, and that experience was so rewarding since i learned so much about their experiences and what exactly research consists of. It also made me more excited to join CS STARS.

These are a few of my favorite things!
I like to read, crochet, and work out!

Research Description
Research has shown that media, especially television, can influence the views and behavior of young people. Since technology plays a big role in society and appears frequently on television, how it appears can impact how viewers feel about technology. To analyze the extent of this impact on young people, our research analyzes the frequency of technology-related content in teen dramas. More specifically, we will focus on the privacy and security side of technology as it plays a large influence on how viewers interact and behave with technology. Utilizing the frequency of keywords in the captions of tv shows, we can identify the trends of technology, security, and privacy topics in teen television. We will use these keywords to quantitatively analyze and visualize our findings so we can make high-level analyses automatically. We will also qualitatively analyze any occurrences of technology-related content to gain a more nuanced understanding of the context. Finally, scraping for corresponding IMDB metadata about the episodes and shows, including air date, genre, and popularity, will provide us more context to view trends based on these categories.

Biography
Saloni Vaishnav is a second year student in Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. She is involved in Women in Computer Science and Reflections | Projections on campus aside from her classes. She is also part of the course staff for CS 124 Honors as well as a CA for CS 361 Probability and Statistics. Her interests include Human Computer Interaction, including how people use technology, security and privacy implications, and social impacts of technology.