danah boyd is an internationally recognized authority on the ways people use networked social media as a context for social interaction—who inhabits the world of online social network sites, what they do there, and why. She has been called the "high priestess" of online social network sites by the Financial Times.
danah researches how social media like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and YouTube are integrated into people's daily practices. Much of her work focuses on American youth practices, popular social network sites, and sociality. She was one of the researchers in a major 3-year study of digital youth funded by the MacArthur Foundation, resulting in the publication of Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media.
She also studies blogging, media making and social media more broadly.
danah boyd is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, a Research Assistant Professor in Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, a Fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, and an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales.
She has worked as an ethnographer and social media researcher for various corporations, including Intel, Tribe.net, Google and Yahoo! She has advised and consulted for dozens of other companies.
She is a Research Fellow with the Born This Way Foundation, a new foundation started by Lady Gaga and her mother to empower youth to be kind and brave. She is on the board of the Crisis Text Line, an initiative started by DoSomething to provide networked support to youth who are struggling. She is on the advisory board of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. She is a part of the Digital Media & Learning network and is on the Social Networks Global Agenda Council for the World Economic Forum.
At the Berkman Center, danah co-directed the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, formed by the U.S. Attorneys General and MySpace and organized by the Berkman Center to identify potential technical solutions for keeping children safe online. She also co-directed the Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative, funded by the MacArthur Foundation. danah maintains a blog on social media called
Apophenia,
a valuable resource for anyone interested in social media or youth culture.
She also regularly writes academic publications and mainstream essays, published in a range of venues, including the Guardian, New York Times, and Time. danah is one of Foreign Policy's 2012 Top 100 Global Thinkers. She was named by Fast Company to their list of the Most Influential Women in Technology and named the smartest academic in tech by Fortune Magazine. She won CITASA's Public Sociology Award. And in 2010, she was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.
danah has given more than 100 invited talks. She also regularly speaks at academic and industry conferences. Additionally, she is frequently cited as an expert in the press.
She spent five years creating and managing a large-scale online community for V-Day, a non-profit organization working to end violence against women and girls worldwide.
danah's upcoming book It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens is currently under contract with Yale University Press.
Credentials
Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research
Research Assistant Professor, New York University Department of Media, Culture and Communication
Fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Adjunct Associate Professor, University of New South Wales
Foreign Policy's Top 100 Global Thinkers 2012
Funded by the MacArthur Foundation
Formerly a researcher for: Yahoo!, Google, Tribe.net, Intel.
One of the Most Influential Women in Technology, Fast Company
Smartest Academic in Tech, Fortune Magazine
CITASA Public Sociology Award
World Economic Forum Young Global Leader
MIT Presidential Fellow
PhD, School of Information, University of California-Berkeley
Masters in Sociable Media, MIT MediaLab
Bachelors in Computer Science, Brown University
Former Advisory Board for LiveJournal, Blyk, Technorati, Youth Media Exchange, O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference, SXSW-Interactive, and Blogher
Former Director of New Media Consortium
Co-director of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force and the Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative
Member of the Ad Council's Internet Safety Coalition
Commissioner on the Knight Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy Profiled in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Magazine, and Financial Times
Academic credentials
Ph.D in Information, University of California-Berkeley, 2008; Master’s in Sociable Media, MIT Media Lab, 2002; Bachelor’s in Computer Science, Brown University, 2000.
Her Ph.D. dissertation focused on how American youth engage in networked publics like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc. This work was funded by the MacArthur Foundation as part of a broader grant on digital youth and informal learning.
She has published dozens of academic articles in venues like New Media & Society, First Monday, Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, International Journal of Communication, and Information, Communication, and Society. See the full list at danah.org.
Books
Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out
Kids Living and Learning with New Media
danah boyd, Mimi Ito and many other contributors
This book was written as a collaborative effort by members of the Digital Youth Project, a three-year research effort funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and conducted at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California.
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning
Conventional wisdom about young people's use of digital technology often equates generational identity with technology identity: today's teens seem constantly plugged in to video games, social networks sites, and text messaging. Yet there is little actual research that investigates the intricate dynamics of youth's social and recreational use of digital media. Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out fills this gap, reporting on an ambitious three-year ethnographic investigation into how young people are living and learning with new media in varied settings — at home, in after school programs, and in online spaces. By focusing on media practices in the everyday contexts of family and peer interaction, the book views the relationship of youth and new media not simply in terms of technology trends but situated within the broader structural conditions of childhood and the negotiations with adults that frame the experience of youth in the United States.
Integrating twenty-three different case studies — which include Harry Potter podcasting, video-game playing, music-sharing, and online romantic breakups — in a unique collaborative authorship style, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out is distinctive for its combination of in-depth description of specific group dynamics with conceptual analysis.
The MIT Press, (November 2009)
Subjects
danah tailors each presentation to the needs of her audience and is not limited to the topics we have listed below. These are subjects that have proven valuable to customers in the past and are meant only to suggest her range and interests. Please ask us about any subject that interests you; we are sure that we can accommodate you.
How youth use social media is of great interest and concern to many, including parents, teachers, government, and industry. Over the last decade, danah has studied a wide range of topics related to young people's use of social media. She has examined why they adopt the tools they do and what they do with them, including Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, MySpace, YouTube, texting, etc. Curious about the widespread belief that "kids don't care about privacy," danah has developed work that shows how teens seek to achieve privacy in light of very public tools. Likewise, her work has addressed a wide variety of issues under the umbrella of "online safety," including sexual crimes against children, bullying, sexting, eating disorder communities, and other concerns.
Youth Engagement with Social Media: Challenges and Opportunities
Why do young people spend so much time using social media? How can they value privacy when they share so much online? How do we help them navigate the challenges of drama and bullying? How does their social media use give us hints about where the future is heading? And what does all of this mean for forward-looking educators and schools? These are some of the questions that danah boyd will address in her talk. She will discuss young people's practices and attitudes, provide insight into how social media is affecting their lives, and describe new opportunities for leveraging technology to empower youth.
Sociable Media and Online Communities
The technologies that enable sociable media are changing how we interact, get information and do business. danah boyd studies how society and identity work in this new networked world:
How we perceive other people online.
What a virtual crowd looks like.
How social conventions develop in the networked world.
Networked social media
Definition: mediated environments where people can use their computer or mobile phone to connect with friends, share information, and generate content. Example tools include:
Social network sites — e.g., Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn
Media sharing platforms - e.g., YouTube, Flickr, Pinterest
Blogging and online journaling - e.g., Blogger, Tumblr, Twitter
Videos
Youth Culture in the Networked Era — NAIS
Teen Privacy Strategies in Networked Publics
Reviews
An association that supports northeast regional independent schools:
danah was wonderful: smart, intense, knowledgeable, funny, and clearly committed to her work and its importance. We loved her!
A recreational equipment company:
This is a belated note of thanks for the truly wonderful presentation you made at the [...] Leadership Conference last month. Your presentation was really well received and has continued to be the topic of conversation. I personally appreciate how you took what I assume to be part of your standard presentation and wove in a discussion unique and important to [us]. I’ve never seen anyone do quite as good a job of that as you did.
I know you don’t do many talks and having seen you present makes me feel all the more honored that you took the time and energy to share with us. Our VP of the web came up to me afterward and said that we just moved the entire room forward because of your insights.
A book publishing conference:
Thank you so much for your contribution to [our] Conference. You were the perfect way to end the day. You spoke with intelligence and confidence, and although you stressed the new networks and their importance to our industry and beyond, you also addressed the general love of the physical book that you feel and is shared by so many. You were great with the questions. And I, personally, enjoyed our 'social' conversations very much. The day was a success and your participation helped make it so.
A youth marketing Conference:
Brilliant, definitely provocative.
A media-sponsored leadership conference:
Dear danah — Thank you so much for hosting such an inspiring session during our BBC Leadership Conference last week. We had some wonderful feedback from the delegates! It was lovely to meet you, danah, and thank you so much for fitting us into your schedule.
Conventional wisdom about young people's use of digital technology often equates generational identity with technology identity: today's teens seem constantly plugged in to video games, social networks sites, and text messaging. Yet there is little actual research that investigates the intricate dynamics of youth's social and recreational use of digital media. *Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out* fills this gap, reporting on an ambitious three-year ethnographic investigation into how young people are living and learning with new media in varied settings — at home, in after school programs, and in online spaces. By focusing on media practices in the everyday contexts of family and peer interaction, the book views the relationship of youth and new media not simply in terms of technology trends but situated within the broader structural conditions of childhood and the negotiations with adults that frame the experience of youth in the United States.
Integrating twenty-three different case studies — which include Harry Potter podcasting, video-game playing, music-sharing, and online romantic breakups — in a unique collaborative authorship style, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out is distinctive for its combination of in-depth description of specific group dynamics with conceptual analysis.
Conventional wisdom about young people's use of digital technology often equates generational identity with technology identity: today's teens seem constantly plugged in to video games, social networks sites, and text messaging. Yet there is little actual research that investigates the intricate dynamics of youth's social and recreational use of digital media. *Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out* fills this gap, reporting on an ambitious three-year ethnographic investigation into how young people are living and learning with new media in varied settings — at home, in after school programs, and in online spaces. By focusing on media practices in the everyday contexts of family and peer interaction, the book views the relationship of youth and new media not simply in terms of technology trends but situated within the broader structural conditions of childhood and the negotiations with adults that frame the experience of youth in the United States.
Integrating twenty-three different case studies — which include Harry Potter podcasting, video-game playing, music-sharing, and online romantic breakups — in a unique collaborative authorship style, Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out is distinctive for its combination of in-depth description of specific group dynamics with conceptual analysis.