Hello! ☺

I am Hussam Habib. Currently, I am in Graz, Austria & I do Computational Social Science.

  1. FAST NUCES 2018
  2. University of Iowa 2024
  3. New York University 2025
  4. University of Graz •

I am a postdoctoral researcher in the CS2 @ UniGraz, Austria.

Previously I was a researcher at NYU, with Rachel Greenstadt at the PSAL lab, a PhD student at University of Iowa, with Rishab Nithyanand at the SPARTA lab, and a member of the CP3.

I research how social media platforms behave, especially their recommender systems. I measure how platforms have the capacity to change user behaviors and show what it would take to make them work better for the people using them.

Research statement Outdated
Research Statement Curriculum vitae Outdated
CV

Current thoughts & Updates

  • Our paper characterizing platform behaviors got accepted @ ICWSM’26.
  • Submitted a working paper on how to design better social media platforms @ CSCW Compass with Tim. (accepted)
  • Started a Pakistani CSS research collective (link soon).
  • Thinking about how watching misinformation on TikTok is different from reading it in a newspaper.
  • Thinking about how algorithms optimizing for engagement and their incentives change production behaviors.
  • Collected a large (500M) random sample of YouTube videos.
  • Started my postdoc @ UniGraz.
Work I have done
Investigating the behaviors of social media algorithms.
How users shape platforms, and how platforms shape users.
Content moderation and what it cannot do.
Work I am doing
The dissociative states of consumption when brain rotting and why they matter.
How does curation that predicts engagement change production behaviors?
Big areas I am working towards
Social media platforms and political dysfunction.
The mechanisms of social media platform harms.
How can we make better social media platforms?
Other ventures
Measuring Pakistan's information system and how power moves through it.