Social & Interactive Media Lab
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
The academic research home of Dr. Alex P. Leith, Associate Professor (Tenured) of Mass Communications at SIUE. We study the humans who use social platforms, virtual environments, and interactive media — from Twitch streams to VR workplaces — producing peer-reviewed scholarship, open educational resources, and open-source tools alongside student researchers.
02 — Research Focus
Virtual Environments
We examine social interaction and behavior within immersive digital spaces — from videoconferencing fatigue and team cohesion in virtual meetings to social support and accessibility in VRChat communities. Backed by a completed $1.6M NSF initiative on the future of work in VR.
Platforms & Communities
We study video game players and the communities that form around gameplay on livestreaming platforms like Twitch — investigating parasocial relationships with streamers, avatar identity, and synchronous chat dynamics.
AI / NLP
We develop and apply computational tools for communication research — from the TASS natural language processing package for sentiment analysis to distributed AI agent architectures for scalable feedback in technical learning environments.
Open Science / OER
We build open educational resources and open-source research tools — including interactive textbooks, R packages, and browser-based instruments — to make methods instruction transparent, reproducible, and accessible to all students.
03 — Lab Updates
Stay updated with our latest news, papers, and announcements on Medium.