September 11, 2024 – Data & Society (D&S) is pleased to announce the appointment of Alice Marwick as the organization’s director of research.
A communication scholar who uses qualitative and critical methods to analyze the sociocultural impact of popular digital technologies, Marwick was previously a Data & Society fellow, and more recently served the organization as an advisor. In her new role, Marwick will work to enhance the rigor and breadth of the D&S research agenda, supporting groundbreaking research and seeding ideas through internal and external exploration and collaboration. She will also provide mentorship for the research team, and strategize about new ways for the organization to engage with our extended network and the public.
Before this appointment, Marwick served as associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is also a founding principal investigator at UNC’s Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP), and has played a pivotal role in its mission and research since its inception in 2019. She spearheaded the Critical Disinformation Studies project at CITAP, which set the agenda for including race and other structural power inequalities into the study of disinformation. In 2017, as a D&S fellow, Marwick co-authored Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online, a flagship report examining far-right online subcultures’ use of social media to spread disinformation, for which she was named one of 2017’s Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine. Her recent book, The Private is Political, examines how the networked nature of online privacy disproportionately impacts marginalized individuals in terms of gender, race, and socio-economic status, and recently won the best book award from the Information Technology and Politics division of the American Political Science Association.
“I’m very excited to welcome Dr. Alice Marwick back to Data & Society as our director of research, “said Janet Haven, executive director. “Alice’s brilliant work at the intersection of social media and democracy has been profoundly influential and could not be more timely. I’m looking forward to the new and urgent research directions I know Data & Society will develop under her leadership.”
“I am so thrilled to be returning to D&S in this role, and for the opportunity to work with this incredible team of researchers,” Marwick said. “I know first-hand how D&S’s empirical research serves the field and the public interest, and it has been exciting to see the organization grow in size and ambition. Together, the research team will continue to contribute to, and further strengthen, a growing body of sociotechnical research — doing so at a time when it is urgently needed by decision-makers who are grappling with complex societal challenges around data, technology, and automation.”
“We are looking forward to beginning a new chapter of working with Alice in her role at Data & Society, where she will continue to pursue her groundbreaking research on media and public life,” said Daniel Kreiss, a founding principal investigator at CITAP.
Marwick holds a PhD from NYU’s Department of Media, Culture, and Communication.
About Data & Society
Data & Society is an independent nonprofit research organization, studying the social implications of data-centric technologies and automation. We recognize that the same innovative technologies that may benefit society can also be abused to invade privacy, provide new tools of discrimination, foreclose opportunity and harm individuals and communities. We believe that technology policy must be grounded in empirical evidence, and serve the public.