June 16, 2026 | News | PHD

Congratulations, Carolina Coimbra Vieira!

Carolina Coimbra Vieira from the Laboratory of Migration and Mobility at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR), successfully defended her doctoral thesis, “Migration, culture, and inequalities in algorithmically-mediated societies“, at the Saarland University. Her findings contribute to our understanding of how digital trace data can be used to measure and analyze culture, migration, gender inequalities, and online behavior, particularly in contexts where traditional data sources are limited or delayed.

Carolina Coimbra Vieira successfully defended her doctoral thesis at the Saarland University. © MPIDR/Schulz

In her dissertation Carolina shows how digital trace data from platforms such as Facebook, Twitter/X, TikTok, and Wikipedia can be used to study culture, migration, gender inequalities, and online behavior. Her research develops new methods to measure cultural similarity, information seeking behavior during forced migration, and gender disparities in near real time. Carolina’s findings are valuable for researchers, policymakers, and humanitarian organizations, particularly in contexts where traditional data are scarce or unavailable.

Carolina Coimbra Vieira was part of the International Max Planck Research School for Population, Health and Data Science (IMPRS-PHDS), a doctoral program combining demography, epidemiology and data science. The dissertation was supervised by Krishna Gummadi (MPI for Software Systems) and Emilio Zagheni.

Carolina Coimbra Vieira after her defense. © private

Related Publications

Coimbra Vieira, C.; Şanlitürk, A. E.; Zagheni, E.:

Forced migration and information seeking behavior on Wikipedia: insights from the Ukrainian refugee crisis

In: Proceedings of the 20th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM-26): Los Angeles, CA, USA, May 27–29, 2026, 2358–2381. Washington, DC: AAAI Press. (2026)       

Coimbra Vieira, C.; Mousavi, S.; Ayalon, O.; Dash, A.; Gummadi, K.; Zannettou, S.:

Exploring the limits of predicting user watching behavior with short-form videos on TikTok

WebSci Companion '26: Companion Publication of the 2026 18th ACM Web Science Conference, 142–148. (2026)       

Coimbra Vieira, C.; Vasconcelos, M.:

Characterizing global gender gaps in STEM using Facebook data

In: 20th International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics, ISSI 2025: June 23-27, 2025, Yerevan, Armenia; proceedings: volume 1, 417–431. Yerevan: ISSI. (2025)    

Coimbra Vieira, C.; Lohmann, S.; Zagheni, E.:

The value of cultural similarity for predicting migration: evidence from food and drink interests in digital trace data

Population and Development Review 50:1, 149–176. (2024)       

Coimbra Vieira, C.; Alburez-Gutierrez, D.; Nepomuceno, M. R.; Theile, T.:

Desaparecidxs: characterizing the population of missing children using Twitter

In: WebSci '22: proceedings of the 14th ACM Web Science Conference, Barcelona, Spain, 26-29 June 2022, 185–190. New York: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). (2022)    

Coimbra Vieira, C.; Lohmann, S.; Zagheni, E.; Vaz de Melo, P. O. S.; Benevenuto, F.; Ribeiro, F. N.:

The interplay of migration and cultural similarity between countries: evidence from Facebook data on food and drink interests

PLOS One 17:2, e0262947–e0262947. (2022)       

Coimbra Vieira, C.; Vasconcelos, M.:

Using Facebook ads data to assess gender balance in STEM: evidence from Brazil

In: WWW'21: companion proceedings of the Web Conference 2021, 145–153. New York: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). (2021)