SNA All-Star: Danah Boyd

           Danah Boyd is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research and a Research Scholar/Adjunct Professor in New York University's Department of Media, Culture and Communication. Her research examines everyday practices involving social media, with specific attention to youth practices. She uses methodologies and theories from anthropology, communications, cultural studies, media studies, sociology, and perhaps a few other disciplines along the way.  She is particularly fond of studying practices in the context of social media phenomena because she enjoys watching the evolution of practice. Much of her fieldwork involves a set of familiar technologies and genres of social media: Twitter, social network sites, Facebook, MySpace, tagging, blogging, Friendster, email, Usenet. Her current work focuses on teens' privacy practices in highly public environments. She recently co-authored "Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media" and her new book "The Social Lives of Networked Teens" is due out in 2012. While at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Danah co-directed the Youth and Media Policy Working Group, where she examined the policy issues surrounding risky behaviors and online safety. In 2011, Danah was selected as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and in 2010, she won the CITASA Award for Public Sociology. She is on the board of directors of the New Media Consortium and on the Electronic Privacy Information Center's board of advisors. She received her bachelor's degree in computer science from Brown University, her Master's in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT, and her PhD in Information from the University of California-Berkeley.