Angèle Christin

Sorbonne University - IEA de Paris Chair on "Major Changes"

Angèle Christin is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication and affiliated faculty in the Sociology Department and Program in Science, Technology, and Society at Stanford University. She studies how algorithms and analytics transform professional values, expertise, and work practices.

Her past research focused on the case of web journalism, analyzing the growing importance of audience metrics (‘clicks’) in web newsrooms in the U.S. and France, drawing on ethnographic methods. She also studied the construction, institutionalization, and reception of predictive algorithms in the U.S. criminal justice system.

She received her PhD in Sociology from Princeton University and the EHESS (Paris). She is an affiliate at the Data & Society Research Institute.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Algorithms and analytics, artificial intelligence, technology and sociotechnical systems, ethnography, work and organizations, journalism and new media, culture, comparative sociology.

Research project

In the Shadows of Algorithms? The Paradoxes of Algorithmic Labor

Digital technologies are transforming the production, distribution, and reception of news and media content in contemporary societies; they are also affecting existing systems of visibility and invisibility. To date, most research has focused on the kinds of labor made invisible by social media platforms. Paradoxically, in spite of media headlines on the dynamics of instant “virality,” less academic attention has been paid to the new forms of public visibility that have emerged on social media platforms, and their impact on the public sphere. In this project I examine the work practices, employment structures, and systems of online visibility enabled by algorithmic systems. Based on my ethnographic fieldwork in progress with influencers and content creators working across platform, I analyze the implications of these new forms of media discourse for the study of the algorithmic public sphere.