Rik Hunter is pursuing a PhD in the UW-Madison English department's Composition and Rhetoric program. His research interests include new media, fan studies, collective intelligence, and collaborative writing, and authorship, and his dissertation, entitled "A Hypersocial-Interactive Model of Wiki Writing:
Collaboration, Conversation, and Composition in an Online Fan Community of Writers," develops an understanding of how the interaction of wiki technology and the social practices of a self-sponsored fan community shape the collaborative talk around writing.