Eszter Hargittai
Eszter Hargittai (Ph.D. sociology, Princeton) is a professor and chair of Internet use and society at the Institute of Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich. Previously, she was the Delaney Family Professor in the communication studies department at Northwestern University. In 2019, she was elected Fellow of the International Communication Association and also received the William F. Ogburn Mid-Career Achievement Award from the American Sociological Association’s section on Communication, Information Technology and Media Sociology.
Hargittai’s research looks at how people may benefit from their digital media uses with a particular focus on how differences in people’s Web-use skills influence what they do online. Much of her work has looked at how people from different backgrounds use the Internet for information seeking and content sharing; research she has recently expanded to the domains of science and religion. She is also interested in methodological questions related to digital media.
Hargittai is editor of Research Confidential: Solutions to Problems Most Social Scientists Pretend They Never Have (University of Michigan Press, 2009), co-editor with Chris- tian Sandvig of Digital Research Confidential (The MIT Press, 2015), and editor of a forthcoming methods volume from Columbia University Press. All of these present a behind-the-scenes look at doing empirical social science research in the digital media age. She is also editing the Handbook of Digital Inequality forthcoming from Edward Elgar Publishing. Hargittai has published over 90 journal articles and book chapters. She has given invited talks in 19 countries on five continents. She has keynoted 18 meetings, given over 160 invited talks, and has presented at numerous conferences representing different disciplines. Hargittai’s work has been featured in many popular media outlets in the United States and internationally.
Her research has been supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, U.S. National Science Foundation, Nokia, Google, Facebook, and Merck, among others. She tweets @eszter.
