Julia Angwin

Julia Angwin is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author who investigates the convergence of technology and media with an eye toward the future of social networks. She is a New York Times contributing Opinion writer and the founding director of the Independent Media + Audience Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Her newest book, “On Courage: How to be a Dissident in an Age of Fear,” (co-written with Ami Fields-Meyer) was published in June 2026 by Mariner Books and instantly became a New York Times bestseller. Rachel Maddow calls the book “Invaluable. A classic of our time.”

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Born and raised in Silicon Valley by parents who worked in the tech industry, she has a unique and profound sense of what works and what doesn’t in the virtual marketplace — and why. With her reporter’s instinct and keen insider knowledge, she provides a much-needed critical perspective on the current trends in social media and where technology might take us in the future. Combining skillful reporting with great storytelling, she zeroes in on the latest news, innovations, and strategies of the high-tech sphere, providing incisive analysis with a clear-eyed perspective and gentle wit. She sees a future of “safe spaces,” in which we build our own personalized set of social networks that will help us express our individual identities and connect with others who share the same interests and goals. She is on the front lines of the networking revolution.

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In 2024, Angwin launched Proof News, a nonprofit news outlet that aims to restore public trust in journalism in light of the ongoing impacts of AI. In 2018, she founded The Markup, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the effects of technology on society. From 2014 to 2018, she was a senior reporter at the independent news organization ProPublica, where she led the team that was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting in 2017 and won a Gerald Loeb Award in 2018.

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For more than a decade, Angwin was a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where she led a privacy investigative team that was a Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting in 2011 and won a Gerald Loeb Award in 2010. In 2003, she contributed reportage with the team that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting for their coverage of corporate corruption.

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She is also the author of the New York Times bestseller “Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance” (Times Books, 2014) and “Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America” (Random House, 2009).

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