danah boyd

danah boyd
At the Web 2.0 Conference in 2005
Born	November 24, 1977 (1977-11-24) (age 33) Altoona, Pennsylvania
Nationality	American
Fields	social media
Institutions	Microsoft Research
Alma mater	UC Berkeley, MIT Media Lab, Brown University
Doctoral advisor	Peter Lyman, Mizuko Ito
Known for	Commentary on sociality, identity, and culture among youth on social networks
Notable awards	Technology Review TR35 Young Innovators 2010[1]

danah boyd (born Danah Michele Mattas^[2]) 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.^[3]

Biography

She grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and Altoona, Pennsylvania,^[4] 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.^[4] 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."^[4] 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.^[5]

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.^[6][7]

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,^[8] and then served on the Youth and Media Policy Working Group.^[9] In January 2009, boyd joined Microsoft Research New England, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a Social Media Researcher.^[10] 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.^[11][12] 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.^[13] 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."^[14] 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,^[15] and has spoken at many academic conferences, including SIGIR, SIGGRAPH, CHI, Etechm 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.^[16][17][18] She also appeared in the 2008 PBS Frontline documentary Growing Up Online providing commentary on youth and technology.^[19] In May 2010, she received the Award for Public Sociology from the American Sociological Association's Communication and Information Technologies (CITASA) section.^[20] Also in 2010, Fortune named her the smartest academic in the technology field^[21] and "the reigning expert on how young people use the Internet."^[22] In 2010, boyd was included on the TR35 list of top innovators under the age of 35.^[23]

References

1. ^ MIT (2010). 2010 Young Innovators under 35, Danah Boyd, 32, Microsoft Research: Shaping the rules for social networks, Technology Review.
2. ^ Boyd, Danah. "a bitty autobiography / a smattering of facts". danah.org. http://www.danah.org/aboutme.html. Retrieved November 2, 2008. 
3. ^ Fast Company Staff (February 1, 2009). "Women in Tech: The Evangelists". Fast Company. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/132/the-most-influential-women-in-technology-the-evangelists.html. Retrieved May 22, 2010. 
4. ^ ^{a b c} Debelle, Penelope (August 4, 2007). "A space of her own – Encounter with Danah Boyd". The Age (Australia). 
5. ^ Erard, Michael (November 27, 2003). "Decoding the New Cues in Online Society". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/27/technology/circuits/27frie.html. Retrieved May 22, 2010. ^{[dead link]}
6. ^ "Taken Out of Context – my PhD dissertation". zephoria.org. January 18, 2009. http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/01/18/taken_out_of_co.html. 
7. ^ Doctorow, Cory (January 19, 2009). "danah boyd's PhD thesis: Teen sociality online". Boing Boing. http://boingboing.net/2009/01/19/danah-boyds-phd-thes.html. Retrieved May 22, 2010. 
8. ^ "Members of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force". Berkman Center for Internet & Society. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/research/isttf/members. Retrieved May 22, 2010. 
9. ^ "Youth and Media Policy Working Group Initiative". Berkman Center for Internet & Society. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/research/digitalnatives/policy. Retrieved May 2, 20102. 
10. ^ McCarthy, Caroline (September 22, 2008). "Microsoft hires social-net scholar Danah Boyd". CNET. http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10047795-36.html. Retrieved January 12, 2009. 
11. ^ "MacArthur Foundation Project Summary". http://digitallearning.macfound.org/site/c.enJLKQNlFiG/b.4773555/k.27DE/Mizuko_Ito.htm. Retrieved January 9, 2009. 
12. ^ "Final Report". The Digital Youth Project. http://digitalyouth.ischool.berkeley.edu/report. Retrieved January 9, 2009. 
13. ^ boyd, danah. Buckingham, David. ed. "Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life". Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning (Cambridge: MIT Press): 119–142. doi:10.1162/dmal.9780262524834.119. ISSN 978-0262026352. http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dmal.9780262524834.119. Retrieved May 16, 2010 
14. ^ Ito, Mimi; et al. (September 2009). Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-01336-3. 
15. ^ Shirky, Clay (February 28, 2008). Here Comes Everybody. Penguin Group. pp. 224–5. ISBN 978-1-59420-153-0. 
16. ^ "danah boyd's Opening Remarks on Privacy and Publicity" (Press release). South by Southwest. March 14, 2010. http://sxsw.com/node/4604. Retrieved May 22, 2010. 
17. ^ Kincaid, Jason (03-13-2010). "Danah Boyd: How Technology Makes A Mess Of Privacy and Publicity". TechCrunch. http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/13/privacy-publicity-sxsw/. Retrieved May 22, 2010. 
18. ^ "Keynote Talk: danah boyd on “Publicity and Privacy in Web 2.0″". WWW 2010. April 29, 2010. http://www2010.org/www/2010/04/www2010-keynote-tallk/. Retrieved May 22, 2010. 
19. ^ "PBS Frontline: "Growing Up Online" with danah boyd – January 22nd" (Press release). Berkman Center for Internet & Society. 01-14-2008. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/3885. Retrieved May 22, 2010. 
20. ^ "2010 CITASA Awards". CITASA. 2010. http://citasa.org/awards. Retrieved May 30, 2010. 
21. ^ Jessi Hempel; Beth Kowitt (September 7, 2010). "Smartest Academic: Danah Boyd". Fortune. http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/technology/1007/gallery.smartest_people_tech.fortune/26.html. Retrieved January 8, 2010. 
22. ^ Hempel, Jessi (2010). "Ones to watch: Danah Boyd". Fortune. http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/fortune/1010/gallery.fast_risers_under_40.fortune/index.html. Retrieved October 14, 2010. 
23. ^ Naone, Erica (2010). "Danah Boyd, 32". Technology Review. http://www.technologyreview.com/TR35/Profile.aspx?Cand=T&TRID=948. Retrieved August 25, 2010. 

External links

	Internet portal
	Biography portal

• danah boyd's homepage
• Boyd, Danah (February 19, 2006). "Socializing Digitally". Vodafone Receiver. http://www.receiver.vodafone.com/18-socializing-digitally. Retrieved March 10, 2008. 
• Boyd, Danah (September 14, 2006). "A Discussion with Danah Boyd". Ibiblio Speaker Series. http://www.ibiblio.org/speakers/index.cgi/2006/09/14#boyd06. Retrieved March 10, 2008. 
• Boyd, Danah (March 26, 2008). "An interview with Danah Boyd". Women of Web 2.0 Show. http://edtechtalk.com/node/3085. Retrieved April 17, 2008. 
• "Interview: Danah Boyd" (video). Discover magazine. http://discovermagazine.com/videos/interview-danah-boyd. Retrieved January 12, 2009. 
• danah boyd keynote speech (video) Handheld Learning, London October 2008
• Danah Boyd Interview at YouTube

Persondata
Name	Boyd, Danah
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	November 24, 1977
Place of birth	Altoona, Pennsylvania
Date of death
Place of death