Ericka is an Assistant Professor at American University. She earned her Ph.D. at Northwestern University's School of Communication in 2012, and previously worked as an Assistant Professor at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. She is working to integrate mixed methods social science research approaches with digital trace data analysis. Ericka does this by advancing methodological approaches and by developing research software such as Web Historian http://www.webhistorian.org. She applies these methods to study the intersection of political communication and digital media.