Danah Boyd
Encyclopedia
danah boyd also known as Danah Michele Boyd, is an American social media researcher known for her public commentary on the use of social networking sites by youth. A 2009 article in Fast Company
named boyd one of the most influential women in technology.
and Altoona, Pennsylvania
, and attended Manheim Township High School
from 1992–1996. Her initial ambition was to become an astronaut but after an injury, she became more interested in the Internet. She initially studied computer science
at Brown University
where she worked with Andries van Dam
, and wrote an undergraduate thesis on how "3-D computer systems used cues that were inherently sexist." She then pursued her master's degree in sociable media with Judith Donath
at the MIT Media Lab
. She worked for the New York-based V-Day
, first as a volunteer (starting in 2004) and then as paid staff (2007–2009). She eventually moved to San Francisco, where she met the individuals involved in creating the new Friendster
service. She documented what she was observing via her blog, and this grew into a career.
She then enrolled in the PhD program at the UC Berkeley School of Information
, advised by Peter Lyman
(1940–2007) and Mizuko Ito
. Her dissertation, Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics, completed in 2008, focused on the use of large social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace by U.S. teenagers, and was blogged on Boing Boing
.
During the 2006–07 academic year, boyd was a fellow at the Annenberg Center for Communication
at the University of Southern California
. She has been a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society
at Harvard University since 2007, where she co-directed the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, and then served on the Youth and Media Policy Working Group. In January 2009, boyd joined Microsoft Research
New England, in Cambridge, Massachusetts
, as a Social Media Researcher. She was also involved with a three-year ethnographic project funded by the MacArthur Foundation and led by Mimi Ito; the project examined youths' use of technologies through interviews, focus groups, observations, and document analysis. Her publications included an article in the "MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning, Identity Volume" called Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites:The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life. The article focuses on social networks' implications for youth identity. The project culminated with a co-authored book "Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media." In addition to blogging on her own site, she addresses issues of youth and technology use on the DMLcentral blog.
She has written academic papers and op-ed
pieces on online culture, and has spoken at many academic conferences, including SIGIR
, SIGGRAPH
, CHI, Etech
m Personal Democracy Forum
and the AAAS
annual meeting. She gave the keynote addresses at SXSWi
2010 and WWW
2010, discussing privacy, publicity and big data
. She also appeared in the 2008 PBS Frontline documentary Growing Up Online providing commentary on youth and technology. In May 2010, she received the Award for Public Sociology from the American Sociological Association
's Communication and Information Technologies (CITASA) section. Also in 2010, Fortune
named her the smartest academic in the technology field and "the reigning expert on how young people use the Internet." In 2010, boyd was included on the TR35
list of top innovators under the age of 35.
Fast Company (magazine)
Fast Company is a full-color business magazine that releases 10 issues per year and reports on topics including innovation, digital media, technology, change management, leadership, design, and social responsibility...
named boyd one of the most influential women in technology.
Biography
She grew up in Lancaster, PennsylvaniaLancaster, Pennsylvania
Lancaster is a city in the south-central part of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is the county seat of Lancaster County and one of the older inland cities in the United States, . With a population of 59,322, it ranks eighth in population among Pennsylvania's cities...
and Altoona, Pennsylvania
Altoona, Pennsylvania
-History:A major railroad town, Altoona was founded by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1849 as the site for a shop complex. Altoona was incorporated as a borough on February 6, 1854, and as a city under legislation approved on April 3, 1867, and February 8, 1868...
, and attended Manheim Township High School
Manheim Township High School
Manheim Township High School is a four-year public high school located in Manheim Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. It is the only high school in the Manheim Township School District. The school is known for its Quiz Bowl team, which won a national championship in 2000 and for its...
from 1992–1996. Her initial ambition was to become an astronaut but after an injury, she became more interested in the Internet. She initially studied computer science
Computer science
Computer science or computing science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems...
at Brown University
Brown University
Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...
where she worked with Andries van Dam
Andries van Dam
Andries "Andy" van Dam is a Dutch-born American professor of computer science and former Vice-President for Research at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Together with Ted Nelson he contributed to the first hypertext system, HES in the late 1960s. He co-authored Computer Graphics:...
, and wrote an undergraduate thesis on how "3-D computer systems used cues that were inherently sexist." She then pursued her master's degree in sociable media with Judith Donath
Judith Donath
Judith Donath is a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center and was the founder of the at the MIT Media Lab. She has written papers on various aspects of the Internet and its social impact, such as Internet society and community, interfaces, virtual identity issues , and other forms of collaboration...
at the MIT Media Lab
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a laboratory of MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Devoted to research projects at the convergence of design, multimedia and technology, the Media Lab has been widely popularized since the 1990s by business and technology publications such as Wired and Red Herring for a...
. She worked for the New York-based V-Day
V-Day
V-Day, February 14th, is a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls inspired by Eve Ensler's play, The Vagina Monologues. The movement was started in 1998 by author, playwright and activist Eve Ensler. Ensler has been quoted as saying that it was women's reactions to the...
, first as a volunteer (starting in 2004) and then as paid staff (2007–2009). She eventually moved to San Francisco, where she met the individuals involved in creating the new Friendster
Friendster
Friendster is a social gaming site that is based in Malaysia, KL. The company now operates mainly from the three Asian countries namely in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore....
service. She documented what she was observing via her blog, and this grew into a career.
She then enrolled in the PhD program at the UC Berkeley School of Information
UC Berkeley School of Information
The UC Berkeley School of Information or the iSchool is a graduate school offering both a professional master's degree and a research-oriented Ph.D. degree at the University of California, Berkeley. The school was created in 1994 and was known as the School of Information Management and Systems ...
, advised by Peter Lyman
Peter Lyman
George Peter Lyman was an American professor of information science who taught at the University of California, Berkeley School of Information, and was well known in U.S...
(1940–2007) and Mizuko Ito
Mizuko Ito
is a Japanese cultural anthropologist who is an Associate Researcher at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of California, Irvine. In addition, she is a Visiting Associate Professor at the Keio University Graduate School of Media and Governance....
. Her dissertation, Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics, completed in 2008, focused on the use of large social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace by U.S. teenagers, and was blogged on Boing Boing
Boing Boing
Boing Boing is a publishing entity, first established as a magazine, later becoming a group blog.-History:...
.
During the 2006–07 academic year, boyd was a fellow at the Annenberg Center for Communication
Annenberg Center for Communication
The Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California promotes interdisciplinary research in communications between the USC School of Cinematic Arts, Viterbi School of Engineering, and the separate USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, also funded by...
at the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
. She has been a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society is a research center at Harvard University that focuses on the study of cyberspace. Founded at Harvard Law School, the center traditionally focused on internet-related legal issues. On May 15, 2008, the Center was elevated to an interfaculty initiative of...
at Harvard University since 2007, where she co-directed the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, and then served on the Youth and Media Policy Working Group. In January 2009, boyd joined Microsoft Research
Microsoft Research
Microsoft Research is the research division of Microsoft created in 1991 for developing various computer science ideas and integrating them into Microsoft products. It currently employs Turing Award winners C.A.R. Hoare, Butler Lampson, and Charles P...
New England, in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
, as a Social Media Researcher. She was also involved with a three-year ethnographic project funded by the MacArthur Foundation and led by Mimi Ito; the project examined youths' use of technologies through interviews, focus groups, observations, and document analysis. Her publications included an article in the "MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning, Identity Volume" called Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites:The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life. The article focuses on social networks' implications for youth identity. The project culminated with a co-authored book "Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media." In addition to blogging on her own site, she addresses issues of youth and technology use on the DMLcentral blog.
She has written academic papers and op-ed
Op-ed
An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...
pieces on online culture, and has spoken at many academic conferences, including SIGIR
Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval
SIGIR is the Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Information Retrieval. The scope of the group's specialty is the theory and application of computers to the acquisition, organization, storage, retrieval and distribution of information; emphasis is placed on working with...
, SIGGRAPH
SIGGRAPH
SIGGRAPH is the name of the annual conference on computer graphics convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. The first SIGGRAPH conference was in 1974. The conference is attended by tens of thousands of computer professionals...
, CHI, Etech
Emerging Technology Conference
The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference is O'Reilly Media's premier conference about the new technologies that are on the O'Reilly Radar. O'Reilly defines its core business not as books, conferences, or online publishing, though it does all three, but as "changing the world by spreading the...
m Personal Democracy Forum
Personal Democracy Forum
Personal Democracy Forum is a website and annual conference that follows how the internet is changing politics, governance, and advocacy founded by Andrew Rasiej and co-Founder Micah Sifry.- Website :...
and the AAAS
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The American Association for the Advancement of Science is an international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsibility, and supporting scientific education and science outreach for the...
annual meeting. She gave the keynote addresses at SXSWi
South by Southwest
South by Southwest is an Austin, Texas based company dedicated to planning conferences, trade shows, festivals and other events. Their current roster of annual events include: SXSW Music, SXSW Film, SXSW Interactive, SXSWedu, and SXSWeco and take place every spring in Austin, Texas, United States...
2010 and WWW
World Wide Web Conference
The International World Wide Web Conference is a yearly international academic conference on the topic of the future direction of the World Wide Web...
2010, discussing privacy, publicity and big data
Big data
Big data are datasets that grow so large that they become awkward to work with using on-hand database management tools. Difficulties include capture, storage, search, sharing, analytics, and visualizing...
. She also appeared in the 2008 PBS Frontline documentary Growing Up Online providing commentary on youth and technology. In May 2010, she received the Award for Public Sociology from the American Sociological Association
American Sociological Association
The American Sociological Association , founded in 1905 as the American Sociological Society , is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology by serving sociologists in their work and promoting their contributions to serve society.The ASA holds its...
's Communication and Information Technologies (CITASA) section. Also in 2010, Fortune
Fortune (magazine)
Fortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest...
named her the smartest academic in the technology field and "the reigning expert on how young people use the Internet." In 2010, boyd was included on the TR35
TR35
The TR35 is an annual list published by MIT Technology Review magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35.Some of the most famous winners of the award include Larry Page and Sergey Brin , Linus Torvalds , Jerry Yang , Jonathan Ive , Mark Zuckerberg...
list of top innovators under the age of 35.
External links
- danah boyd's homepage
- danah boyd keynote speech (video) Handheld Learning, London October 2008
- Danah Boyd Interview at YouTube