Ericka Menchen-Trevino, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Ericka is a methodologist. She studies human behavior and societies in today's digital environment. She wants to help create usable tools and methods to enable more researchers to ask and answer questions that can improve lives and communities. She has co-founded BRIC to help address the problems that keep researchers from finding, productively using, and building upon open-source digital infrastructure for collecting novel forms of data.
Before co-founding BRIC, she was an Assistant Professor at American University in Washington, D.C. (2015-2023), and Erasmus University in Rotterdam, Netherlands (2012-2015). She is also a lecturer in the communication department at the University of Illinois at Chicago (2025-Present). She earned her Ph.D. from the School of Communication at Northwestern University. Dr. Menchen-Trevino has published academic articles on political communication and computational methods. She also developed software (Web Historian) for collecting digital behavioral data with interactive visualizations.
BRIC-Related Publications
The following publications use a BRIC technology and Ericka Menchen-Trevino is an author.
Clemm von Hohenberg et al. (2024). Analysis of Web Browsing Data: A Guide. Social Science Computer Review, 08944393241227868
Heseltine et al. (2024). Effects of Over-Time Exposure to Partisan Media and Coverage of Polarization on Perceived Polarization. Political Communication, 0, 1–22
Wojcieszak et al. (2023). Non-News Websites Expose People to More Political Content Than News Websites: Evidence from Browsing Data in Three Countries. Political Communication, 0, 1–23
Wojcieszak et al. (2023). Political content and news are polarized but other content is not in YouTube watch histories. Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media, 3
Menchen-Trevino et al. (2023). Searching for politics: Using real-world web search behavior and surveys to see political information searching in context. The Information Society, 39, 98–111
Wojcieszak et al. (2022). Avenues to News and Diverse News Exposure Online: Comparing Direct Navigation, Social Media, News Aggregators, Search Queries, and Article Hyperlinks. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 27, 860–886
Casas et al. (2022). Exposure to Extremely Partisan News from the Other Political Side Shows Scarce Boomerang Effects. Political Behavior
Cronin et al. (2022). The (null) over-time effects of exposure to local news websites: Evidence from trace data. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 0, 1–15
Menchen-Trevino & Karr (2022). Understanding individual web browsing: social media use in context, 126–136
Wojcieszak et al. (2021). No Polarization From Partisan News: Over-Time Evidence From Trace Data. The International Journal of Press/Politics
Weeks et al. (2021). Partisan media, untrustworthy news sites, and political misperceptions. New Media & Society, 14614448211033300
Menchen-Trevino (2016). Web Historian: Enabling multi-method and independent research with real-world web browsing history data
Menchen-Trevino & Karr (2012). Researching Real-World Web Use with Roxy: Collecting Observational Web Data with Informed Consent. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 9, 254–268