We’re thrilled to announce three leading researchers who will be joining danah boyd and the social media research team at Microsoft Research New England in Cambridge, Mass.

Microsoft Research has some of the strongest computer science research in the world. As the world changes and our business expands, there’s a much broader range of research questions that we need to address beyond the technology itself, including how we use that technology, why we want to use that technology and how different cultural norms within the U.S. and other countries impact how we approach future technology development.

At Microsoft Research New England (MSRNE) we’re creating an environment where more conventional computer science research occurs simultaneously with social science research to reflect how people want to use technology.  We need to be asking why before we ask how.  It can’t just be that the social scientists are figuring out the why and the technical people are figuring out the how.  We need to be asking those questions and finding those answers together, in an iterative process, which converges on the development of new disciplines which inform the technology of tomorrow.

With the addition of these researchers, Microsoft Research will continue to engage in fundamental research in social media, and partnering with other Microsoft researchers and collaborating with academics around the world. The research they produce will hopefully help shape future social media technologies, policies and opportunities.

The three exceptional researchers who will join danah are experts in their fields and bring a breadth of diverse experience that will help advance MSRNE’s social media research and our collaboration with the academic community on these important topics.

Nancy Baym, MSR principal researcher, received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1994, writing the first full length academic study of online community. In the late 1990s, she helped co-found the Association of Internet Researchers, an international interdisciplinary association for academics who study social dimensions of new media. She later served as its second President. Most recently, she has been a Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Kansas. Her recent work focuses on the roles of social media in interpersonal relationships and relationship between musicians and their audiences.

Kate Crawford, MSR principal researcher, completed her PhD at the University of Sydney.  She’s been a leading internet researcher in Australia, where she has been teaching and researching online media for the last ten years. Her work focuses on mobile and social media, particularly in their political, social and cultural contexts. She has conducted extensive field work in Australia and India, looking at the diversity in patterns of mobile and social media use across cultures and generations, and the role of gender and socio-economic status. She is a well-known commentator on technology issues, including as a regular guest for the BBC World Service, ABC TV, and multiple newspapers around the world. She has received the prestigious Australian Academy of Humanities Biennial Medal for research excellence as well as the Manning Clark National Cultural Award.  Her books include ‘Adult Themes’ (2006) and the coauthored ‘Internet Adaptations: Language, Technology, Media, Power’ (Palgrave 2012).

Mary L. Gray, MSR senior researcher, studied anthropology before receiving her Ph.D. in Communication from the University of California at San Diego in 2004. Her research looks at how media access and everyday uses of technologies shape people’s lives. Her most recent book, Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America (NYU Press), which won awards from scholarly societies in Anthropology, Media Studies, and Sociology, examines how lesbian, gay, bi, and transgender young people negotiate and express their identities in rural parts of the United States and the role that media, particularly the internet, play in their lives and political work. She served on the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association from 2008 until 2010 and, now, holds a seat on that Association’s Committee on Public Policy. She’s been an Associate Professor of Communication and Culture at Indiana University, with adjunct appointments in American Studies, Anthropology, and Gender Studies.

We anticipate that the work of this world-class team of social media researchers will inform Microsoft product development teams and the broader community on how individuals want to use technology to stay connected to the people and information that matters most to them.

We’ve taken great pride in the research already done by danah and her team, most recently the study that was published about the unintended consequences of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, highlighting how parents help children lie about age to Facebook. This study underscored the importance of understanding the role that technology plays in society and is now informing public policy in Congress.

The multidisciplinary disciplinary research conducted at MSRNE extends beyond social research to economics, machine learning, computational biology and theoretical computer science.  MSRNE is home to 30 leading researchers and post-docs, with 350 visiting researchers per year.  We’re not aware of another group that covers the breadth of research that our team can produce and we’re proud to employ some of the smartest minds in the world in their fields.

I hope you’ll stay connected to our work by following this blog, danah’s blog and the new Microsoft Research blog. I can assure you exciting things are ahead.

- Jennifer Chayes, Managing Director of MSRNE and MSR Distinguished Scientist