RESEARCH
DISSERTATION - FINANCIAL REGULATION, RHETORIC, AND THE DISPUTE RESOLUTION PROCESS
My dissertation research is situated at the intersection of finance, regulatory fields, rhetoric, and the dispute resolution process, using the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as a case study.
Since it was formed in 2011, the CFPB has mediated over a million consumer complaints about the practices of companies who deal with financial products and services. This unique third-party mechanism has allowed consumers to air their grievances in hopes of obtaining financial or non-financial relief. The cases and their outcomes are then posted on a public database on the CFPB's website.
My goal is to use the complaint narratives, metadata, and knowledge of financial regulation in the US to help predict which consumers are more likely to "win" their cases, and why. The first empirical chapter of my dissertation digs into the latent rhetorical strategies in the narratives; the second chapter explores the effect of regulatory fields; and the third chapter examines how political changes, such as the 2016 election, have influenced the dispute resolution process.
Ultimately, I hope my research findings illuminate how consumers can better argue their grievances and find financial justice.
“Theorizing the Culture of Finance: Bridging the ‘Macro-Micro’Divide.” 82nd Annual Meeting of the Southern Sociological Society. Atlanta, GA,
April 10-13.
"RED FLAGS" AND THE CYBERVETTING PROCESS
New internet technologies and social media sites (such as LinkedIn and Facebook) have fundamentally changed the hiring process. Our research unpacks the hiring process from the view of human resource professionals. How do they understand and derive meaning from online content? What moral dilemmas do they face when deciding whether and how to use information from social media profiles? And how do these patterns vary by organizational context?
Publications:
(in preparation) McDonald, Amanda Damarin, Hannah McQueen, and Scott Grether. “The Hunt for Red Flags: Cybervetting and the Moral Performativity of Job Candidates.”
McDonald, Steve, Scott Grether, Kim Holland, and Hannah McQueen. 2018. “Serendipity in the Online Job Market.” In Sociology of the Invisible Hand, edited by A. Mica, K. M. Wyrzykowska, R. Wisniewski, and I. Zielinska. Peter Lang: Berlin.
MASTER'S THESIS - STUDENT LOANS AND THE LIFE COURSE
My master's thesis employs a life course perspective to understand the effect of ever-growing student loan debt burdens on marital status and family formation. I link survey data to government student loan records in order to predict adulthood outcomes, four & ten years after graduation.