His research is about understanding information diffusion and user interaction in social media. He draws on theories from sociology and communication to frame his thinking and research questions, but uses computational methods to collect, wrangle, visualize and analyze large, heterogeneous datasets. He is co-author of the book Going Viral (Polity Press, 2013 and winner of ASIS&T Best Science Books of 2014 Information award and selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2014), which explains what virality is, how it works technologically and socially, and draws out the implications of this process for social change.