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AURA Lab

AURA

Where digital presence becomes research.

Avatars · Users · Relationships · Affect

Three research threads

Presence. Platform. Affect.

Presence

How identity and connection form in VR, streams, and shared virtual rooms.

Platform

How affordances and platforms shape what speech, performance, and audiences can be.

Affect

Sentiment, mood, and emotion at corpus scale — and the methods to measure them honestly.

Recent

What's been published.

Asymmetric Ties in Networked Publics

Alex P. Leith · New Media & Society · 2026 In press

Co-Play: When Watching Isn't Enough

Alex P. Leith · Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds · 2025

Virtual Touch-Up: Impression Management in Videoconferencing

Beyond Meet Space Team, Alex P. Leith · Behaviour & Information Technology · 2025

All publications →

Join

The first conversation is short.

Students and researchers — at SIUE and anywhere else — are welcome to bring a question, an interest, or a dataset. The first conversation is about whether a project is workable and where the friction will be, not about whether the idea is good enough.

aleith@siue.edu → or Read the longer pitch →