I study how language produces and legitimizes power in the public sphere. My work examines the discursive processes that give ideologies their shape and force, as well as those that make particular power relations appear credible and natural. In addressing these questions, I integrate social, cognitive, and quantitative approaches to understand how and why language configures social realities.

My current projects examine how contemporary state and diplomatic rhetoric constructs ideological alignment and legitimizes particular visions of social and political order.

My book Discourses of Ideology: Social Media and the Iranian Election Protests (Routledge, 2018) traces how social movement ideologies and identities are reembedded across media platforms. Grounded in a sociocognitive approach to critical discourse analysis, it examines written and visual texts to show the ways that actors position themselves and become positioned, discursively and symbolically, within a dynamic ideological field.

The book also shows how activists’ tactical communicative practices across social media platforms were taken up in Western legacy media as evidence of ideological alignment, shaping broader narratives about counter‑power, globalization, and activist identity.