Maximilian Brichta
Communication
Economy
Culture
About
How does technology affect your relationship with money? Max's research focuses on the ways digital finance shapes how we spend, invest, and make meaning around our economic lives.
Max is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Virginia working with the Thriving Youth in a Digital Environment (TYDE) initiative. His current research seeks to detail how financial and media literacy collide in the digital age, and how that impacts young adults' financial well-being. He's also a research fellow with Communication Technology Research Lab (CTRL) based out of the University of Pittsburgh in which he studies the nexus of decentralized finance (DeFi) and disinformation. He holds a PhD in Communication from the University of Southern California.
​
His book project Network Money: The Vernacular Economics of Cryptocurrencies details the process of how crypto investors come for profits and play but stay for purpose and polemic. It tells a story about how economic narratives ascend from the fringes of the internet to influence culture, politics, and finance.
