We’re excited to share some fellowship opportunities, sponsored by Microsoft Research, that could support sociotechnical researchers who are thinking about AI, and would like to collaborate with researchers in our group, and others across Microsoft Research. Many of us here are w … | Continue reading
Microsoft Research New England is looking for advanced Ph.D. students interested in bringing sociotechnical perspectives to analyze critical issues of our time. They will join a team of social scientists who use qualitative or quantitative, empirical or critical methods to study … | Continue reading
Microsoft Research New England is looking for a postdoctoral researcher interested in bringing sociotechnical perspectives to analyze critical issues of our time. They will join a team of social scientists who use empirical and critical methods to study the social, political, and … | Continue reading
We are very proud to announce that more than 30 current and past Social Media Collective researchers will be presenting their work at this year’s Association of Internet Researchers conference in Philadelphia. The SMC and AoIR go way back—the SMC’s Senior Principal Research Manag … | Continue reading
Apply here: https://aka.ms/msrne-sts/predoc-apply Deadline: November 1, 2023. (Late or incomplete applications will not be considered.) NOTE: Unfortunately, applicants must be eligible to work in the U.S. to accept the position. Microsoft Research New England is hiring a predo … | Continue reading
The Social Media Collective is VERY EXCITED to welcome a new STS Predoctoral Research Assistant to the Microsoft Research New England Lab!! Sarah Snyder (she/they) holds a Master of Information with a specialization in Culture and Technology from the University of Toronto iSchool … | Continue reading
We are excited to welcome three new members to the research team! Ryland Shaw recently joined us as a predoctoral research assistant; he is completing his MA in Communication from Simon Fraser University. And this month we are joined by two new postdoctoral researchers, Zoë Glatt … | Continue reading
The Verge decided to select the best non-fiction books about technology of all time. As they put it, “Technology craves a narrative but often has a short memory for history. As a publication that contributes to that — The Verge lives in the news cycle, after all — we wanted to pr … | Continue reading
The MSR Social Media Collective put the call out for PhD students studying sociotechnical systems from interdisciplinary perspectives that foster careful (and caring) critique. We were, once again, BLOWN away by the amazing applications (the force is strong in us, friends!) Here … | Continue reading
The Microsoft Research Social Media Collective, based at the Cambridge, MA lab location, consists of Nancy Baym, danah boyd, Tarleton Gillespie, and Mary L. Gray, as well as postdoctoral researchers, faculty visitors, and Ph.D. interns affiliated with MSR New England. We are look … | Continue reading
Mary Gray and Tawanna Dillahunt are involved in the 2023 Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE) and applications are open now until January 3rd. According to their mission statement FASPE “challenges graduate students and future leaders to recognize … | Continue reading
Together with Viva + Yammer and Glint, we are looking for an advanced PhD student for a 12-week paid internship bridging these applied research teams and our Cambridge, Massachusetts-based group of social scientists using empirical and critical methods to study sociotechnical dyn … | Continue reading
The annual meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) is coming up December 7th-10th, and this year for just the second time it is meeting jointly with the Latin American Society for Social Studies of Science and Technology (ESCOCITE). We have a strong contingent o … | Continue reading
As we watch what’s happening at Twitter – billionaire owner burning place to ground, employees leaving in revolt, users mourning their lost world and setting up accounts elsewhere, #RIPTwitter and related hashtags dominating their trending topics – it’s helpful, perhaps, to ask t … | Continue reading
Microsoft Research New England is looking for a postdoctoral researcher interested in bringing sociotechnical perspectives to analyze critical issues of our time. They will join social scientists using empirical and critical methods to study the social, political, and cultural dy … | Continue reading
Microsoft Research New England is looking for advanced Ph.D. students interested in bringing sociotechnical perspectives to analyze critical issues of our time. Interns will join a group of social scientists using empirical and critical methods to study the social, political, and … | Continue reading
The 2022 Association of Internet Researchers Conference is coming up and we have an especially strong contingent of SMC alumnae and current members presenting. These talks and panels cover a range of topics including visibility in underground music scenes, chronic and crip techno … | Continue reading
Credit: Photo by Jenna Ueberberg From influencers, vloggers, live streamers, to “Wanghong” (網紅) in China, the past decade saw the emergence of “creator culture” where “commercializing and professionalizing native social media users” generate and circulate original content “in clo … | Continue reading
This is my last week as a postdoc with the SMC, so I thought I’d write a little something to mark the occasion. It’s been a brilliant two years since completing my PhD, I’ve met some wonderful people and have managed to consolidate my research agenda into something vaguely cohere … | Continue reading
The Social Media Collective once again has a bounty of bright and talented interns joining us for 2022. Some have already joined us; most will be working with us over the summer months. Here they are! Benjamin Ale-Ebrahim (he/him) is a fifth year Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology a … | Continue reading
I’m thrilled that I get to seek an additional SMC intern this year, for the spring of 2022. This would be a 12-week paid internship, like our summer gig, but running approximately March-May. Please… | Continue reading
Nancy Baym and SMC alum Ifeoma Ajunwa are guest editing a special issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication! They welcome submissions from the extended SMC network. See the call for p… | Continue reading
We’re excited to share a new publication from Elizabeth Fetterolf, on how care workers perform their trustworthiness, and how platform algorithms grant them different kinds of visibility. Eli… | Continue reading
APPLICATION DEADLINE: JANUARY 11, 2022 APPLICATION LINK: Microsoft Research New England, part of the global network of Microsoft Research Labs, is looking for advanced PhD students to join the Soci… | Continue reading
APPLICATION DEADLINE: JANUARY 11, 2022 APPLICATION LINK: Microsoft Research NYC is looking for an advanced PhD student to conduct an original research project on a topic under the rubric of “sociot… | Continue reading
This year at the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) 22nd annual meeting, current SMC members and alumnae have some fantastic papers around the 2021 theme: independence. Everything is virtu… | Continue reading
Given the overwhelming SMC presence at the 2021 Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) annual meeting, we thought we’d assemble a list of panels chaired by, organized by, and featuring SMC memb… | Continue reading
Inspired by a burst of new, exciting books from some of our past postdocs and interns, we thought we’d pull all the books from our SMC alums together in one place. What a l… | Continue reading
SMC postdoc Niall Docherty has a new publication in the International Journal of Communication, ‘Digital Self-Control and the Neoliberalization of Social Media Well-Being’. Check it out… | Continue reading
Our SMC collaborators at Microsoft Research Cambridge (UK) have a new post on the Microsoft Research blog about parallel chat in online meetings. Enjoy! Find the original blog post here. By Advait … | Continue reading
The Microsoft Research Social Media Collective, based in the Cambridge, MA lab location, consists of Nancy Baym, Tarleton Gillespie, and Mary L. Gray, as well as postdoctoral researchers, faculty v… | Continue reading
Hi SMC friends! Just a quick post to announce a new book, out this month from UC Press. In researching craigslist for an earlier project, I started thinking about changing digital culture as a form… | Continue reading
While we can’t welcome them in person, given the circumstances of the world, we’re truly fortunate to have even more than our usual share arriving remotely, for postdoc and intern posit… | Continue reading
The potential well-being costs of the pandemic are many and harsh. Financial well-being is said to be at risk due to shrinking employment opportunities; physical well-being due to stay-at-home orde… | Continue reading
Join panelists Taina Bucher (University of Oslo), Brian Jefferson (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and Niall Docherty (Microsoft Research) to discuss digital temporalities as they interse… | Continue reading
LATEST UPDATES: That’s a wrap! The 2021 application process is NOW CLOSED. Contact Mary (details below) if you have any problems. On letters of reference: Requests for letters have been sent … | Continue reading
It’s that time of year, when the world falls for interns. It’s that time of year, yet again! Please spread the word that we’re looking for a new set of emerging scholars to add to… | Continue reading
Opportunities to be an intern with the Social Media Collective will be announced here soon. Stay tuned! In addition to these, a friend of SMC in the NYC lab is also seeking an intern whose work wil… | Continue reading
The SMC loves good books. And we especially love books that tackle vital societal problems in a way that’s timely but also deeply researched, that ask biting questions of institutions without… | Continue reading
APPLICATION DEADLINE: December 1, 2020 The Social Media Collective at Microsoft Research New England (MSRNE) is looking for a two-year social media postdoctoral researcher. This position is an idea… | Continue reading
The Social Dilemma has been causing a stir, somewhat ironically, on social media lately. While the film’s topic is timely, and explored with applaudable intentions, its subject matter is mishandled… | Continue reading
In the confusion of our current times, we were not as quick about announcing the newest members of the Social Media Collective as we usually are. Like everyone, we find ourselves out of step with t… | Continue reading
Discussed in this post: Race, Policing, and Detroit’s Project Green Light Yesterday the Wayne County Prosecutor publicly apologized to the first American known to be wrongfully arrested via f… | Continue reading
In a new op-ed, published yesterday in The Hill, Mary L. Gray and her co-authors argue for the importance of human labor behind contact tracing and argue for a more human-centered approach in curre… | Continue reading
Many of our colleagues in academia have had to very quickly migrate their teaching online, in response to changes made by their universities in addressing the coronavirus. This can be so much work … | Continue reading
We’re thrilled that Desmond Patton, associate professor in the School of Social Work at Columbia University, is visiting us for the first half of 2020. He’s a rare bird in our field, ab… | Continue reading
A new edited collection from Melissa Zimdars and Kembrew McLeod called Fake News: Understanding Media and Misinformation in the Digital Age (published by MIT Press, with a clever cover) includes an… | Continue reading
We’re happy to announce the publication of Germaine Halegoua’s new book from NYU Press, The Digital City: Media and the Social Production of Urban Place. (You can read an excerpt publis… | Continue reading