Marjoriikka Ylisiurua is a PhD student in consumer economics. She is currently working at Consumer Society Research Centre at the Department of Political and Economic studies at University of Helsinki, Finland. She was trained in communications engineering, user-centric product development, economic and social history, media studies, and international politics at University of Helsinki (B. Soc. Sc.) and Helsinki University of Technology (M. Sc.).
With an extensive industry background, Ylisiurua’s past and ongoing research concerns the problem of a human community switching to a new frame of mind. Combining machine-learning methods with close reading, in her doctoral thesis she attempts to understand how consumer interest decays as a mechanistic phenomena, using social media material as an example. Her framework is that of complexity science, especially phase transitions.
Ylisiurua has lectured and assisted at the Faculty of Social Sciences in courses on complexity modeling, social media analysis and innovation hype cycles. Her first article, published in 2017 at Kulutustutkimus. NYT! (in Finnish), presented examples of how to analyze the massive Suomi24 online discussion forum data. She is currently working on her second article.