For up-to-date information, please follow @eszter on Twitter.
February, 2015
Eszter Hargittai and collaborator Darren Gergle (also of NU's Communication Studies Department) received a Google Research Award for a study investigating how people find answers to questions in everyday life. See pictures of the ensuing celebration below!
From left to right: Karina Sirota, Richard Herndon, Eszter Hargittai, and Darren Gergle
A question-themed feast followed the announcement.
November, 2014
The WUP team presented a paper on the panel "Evaluating Credibility: Linking Source Evaluation and Technology" at the National Communication Association's annual meetings in Chicago. The paper draws on work done on our Google-funded project about complex searches by diverse users.
September, 2014
Eszter Hargittai gave an invited talk titled "The World Wise Web? The Role of Skills in How People Use the Internet" at the Robert M. Pockrass Memorial Lecture at Penn State.
Eszter Hargittai, Sabrina Connell, Erin Klawitter and Eden Litt presented "Persisting Effects of Internet Skills on Online Participation" at the Telecommunication Policy Research Conference in Arlington, Virginia.
The Web Use Project welcomed three new undergraduate research assistants, Prarthana Gupta, Kaitlin Jennrich, and Nick Prose.
July, 2014
Eszter Hargittai gave an invited talk titled "Young Adults' Civic Engagement on Social Media" at the Arnhold Symposium in Braunschweig, Germany.
June, 2014
Eszter Hargittai and Aaron Shaw presented "A Novel Explanation of Differentiated Contributions to Wikipedia: The Role of Internet Skills" at the International Communication Association Conference in Seattle, Washington.
The Chicago Tribune featured an outside opinion piece by Eszter Hargittai and Brayden King on tips for Twitter use by public figures and companies. Read the article here.
We welcomed two new undergraduate research assistants, Somi Hubbard and Elizabeth Hensley, to the Web Use Project. They will work alongside summer undergraduate research assistants, Richard Herndon and Karina Sirota.
The Web Use Project welcomed a new lab manager, Devon Moore.
April, 2014
The Chronicle of Higher Education featured Eszter Hargittai’s course “Managing Your Online Reputation” in an article concerning how college students use social media.
Erin Klawitter presented “Sharing to Sell: Artists’ Use of Social Media to Promote Their Creative Work” at the Pop Culture Association/American Culture Association national conference in Chicago.
We welcome a new undergraduate research assistant, Jordana Graifman, to the Web Use Project.
March, 2014
Eszter Hargittai served as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Vienna.
The CBC radio program “Spark with Nora Young” featured Eszter Hargittai discussing her research on why women participate less than men on Wikipedia.
February, 2014
Eden Litt received the the Facebook Graduate Fellowship Award! Find out more here.
January, 2014
Eszter Hargittai and Aaron Shaw gave an invited talk titled “Internet Skills and Wikipedia's Gender Inequality” at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
Eszter Hargittai presented “The Social Status Network: Persisting Inequalities in Internet Use" at the Klopsteg Lecture Series for the Science in Human Culture program at Northwestern University.
December, 2013
Eszter Hargittai delivered the keynote address, “Digital Natives or Digital Naïves: The Role of Skill in Internet use” at the Coalition for Networked Information conference in Washington, D.C.
Eszter Hargittai gave an invited talk at Google in Mountain View, California titled “’I Went Home to Google:’ Finding Answers to Health Questions Online.”
Poetics published Eden Litt and Eszter Hargittai’s paper, "Smile, snap, and share? A nuanced approach to privacy and online photo-sharing" in Poetics.
November, 2013
Eszter Hargittai published “The Biggest Mistake in the Healthcare Site? Assuming Everyone Knows How to Use the Web” in the Huffington Post.
Slate published an essay by Eszter Hargittai and danah boyd titled “How Politics, Race, and Socioeconomic Status Parents’ Fears about Tech” regarding their research on parents’ concerns and experiences with Internet safety. The essay received international press coverage.
Eden Litt traveled to Montreal to accept ASIS&T's 2012 Social Informatics Best Student Paper Award and to present her research on the imagined audience. Read the paper here.
Erin Klawitter presented her paper “Disciplining Content: New Media Occupations and the Process Model of Boundary Construction” at the National Communication Association conference in Washington, D.C.
October, 2013
Eszter Hargittai was the inaugural speaker for the Future Present Speaker Series at Merck headquarters in, White House, NJ, 2013. She presented the talk, “Digital Natives or Digital Naïves: How Internet Skills Influence What People Do Online.”
We welcome Visiting Scholar, Giulia Ranzini, a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of St. Gallen Switzerland, as well as two undergraduate research assistants, sophomores Richard Herndon and Theanne Liu, to the Web Use Project.
September, 2013
Policy & Internet published danah Boyd and Eszter Hargittai research on parents’ safety concerns regarding their childrens’ use of technology in an article titled “Connected and concerned: How Parental Concerns with Online Safety Issues Vary.”
August, 2013
The Web Use Project welcomed a talented group of advanced doctoral students to a two-day workshop on Developing Best Practices for Using Digital Tools to Study Human Behavior in Online Environments. The workshop was funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Oxford University Press published a chapter titled “Digital Inequality,” which was written by Eszter Hargittai and Yuli Patrick Hsieh, in the Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies, edited by William Dutton.
Eden Litt received an honorable mention for the CITASA Best Student Paper Award for her article titled, "Knock, Knock. Who's There? The Imagined Audience" in the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. Read the paper here.
July, 2013
Oxford University Press published a chapter by Eszter Hargittai titled the “The Potential – and Potential Pitfalls – of Survey Research” in The Practice of Research: How Social Scientists Answer Their Questions, edited by Shamus Khan and Dana R. Fisher.
June, 2013
The Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media published “The role of Internet Skills and Engagement in Young Adults’ political participation around the 2008 presidential election” by Eszter Hargittai and Aaron Shaw.
The IEEE magazine Security & Privacy published “New strategies for employment?: Internet skills and online privacy practices during people's job search” by Eszter Hargittai and Eden Litt.
Eszter Hargittai was a Keynote Speaker at the RMeS Summer School, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2013.
New Media & Society published Eden Litt’s article "Measuring users’ Internet skills: A review of past assessments and a look toward the future.” Read it here.
We bid farewell for the summer to Eden Lit, who will be spending the summer at Google in Mountain View as a User Experience Research Intern.
April, 2013
Eszter Hargittai spoke in the colloquium series of the School of Education and Social Policy about recent research on young adults' Internet uses and skills.
Eszter Hargittai is the inaugural holder of the Delaney Family Professorship in the School of Communication at Northwestern University. She was also promoted to Full Professor.
Congratulations to Eden Litt for receiving an "Outstanding Volunteer" award from the city of Evanston for her volunteer work at the Evanston Public Library where she helps adults with their Internet-related questions.
A paper that Eszter Hargittai co-authored with danah boyd (Microsoft Research) on parents' concerns about their children's social media uses has been accepted for publication in the journal Policy & Internet.
March, 2013
Eszter Hargittai and Eden Litt have a paper forthcoming in IEEE Privacy & Security on young adults' privacy practices and skills in the realm of employment.
February, 2013
Eden Litt's paper on "Understanding social network site users' privacy tool use" is forthcoming in Computers in Human Behavior later this year.
December, 2012
Eszter Hargittai gave several conference presentations around the world in 2012, including "Visual Learning through Games" at the Visual Learning Conference: Communication, Cognition, Curriculum in Budapest, Hungary.
November, 2012
WUP graduate research assistant Erin Klawitter presented research from her M.A. Thesis at the National Communication Association annual conference in Orlando. The paper, titled "Finding Community in Six Items or Less" explored themes she identified in an analysis of blogs describing users' experiences of participating in the Six Items or Less 30-day experiment in wardrobe minimalism.
Robin Hoecker and Eszter Hargittai published a paper on "Snap Judgments: How Students Search the Web for Their Rights to Photograph in Public" in The Communication Review.
October, 2012
Eszter Hargittai gave a keynote speech at the Sorbonne's program on ICT for Education. Her talk was called "Digital Natives or Digital Naïves? Internet Skills among Members of the 'Net Generation'".
September, 2012
We welcome two new undergraduate research assistants to the group, sophomores Lizzie Friedman and Justin Hatfield, both residents of the Communication Residential College.
Eden Litt published a sole-authored article in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media titled "Knock, Knock. Who's There? The Imagined Audience."
August, 2012
At the American Sociological Association conference in Denver, Colorado, Eszter Hargittai spoke about "Job Search 2.0" and "Becoming a Tweep".
Eszter Hargittai and Heather Young published their paper "Searching for a 'Plan B': Young Adults' Strategies for Finding Information about Emergency Contraception Online" in the journal Policy & Internet.
July, 2012
The Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland, Australia, invited Eszter Hargittai to be a Visiting Scholar in 2012. Find out more here.
June, 2012
The Web Use Project welcomes Rebecca Schieber and Andrea Carney as new undergraduate research assistants for the summer.
Congratulations to long-time WUP research assistant Jenna Lebersfeld on her graduation! We wish her well as she pursues her interests in research on autism and joins Sweeney, Augustin and Associates as a Clinical Assistant.
WUP graduate students Eden Litt and Erin Klawitter gave invited talks at The Berkman Center for Internet & Society. Their talks, respectively titled, "Smile, snap, and share? Understanding Online Photo Sharing Practices" and" (N)O Brother: Siblings and their Effect on Individuals? Online Experiences," present preliminary findings from ongoing WUP research projects.
May, 2012
At the annual meeting of the International Communication Association in Phoenix, Arizona, Eszter Hargittai presented "Biases that Result from Site Activity as Data Source, Methodological Challenges of Researching Social Media". She also spoke about her co-authored work with Aaron Shaw on "The Internet, Young Adults, and Political Engagement around the 2008 U.S. Presidential Elections".
April, 2012
A paper by Eszter Hargittai and Eden Litt on "Becoming a Tweep: How prior online experiences influence Twitter use" was published in the journal Information, Communication, & Society.
September, 2011
Eden Litt presented research co-authored with Eszter on Twitter adoption at Oxford University's Internet Institute Symposium's "A Decade in Internet Time."
February, 2011
Eszter Hargittai, a Fellow at The Berkman Center for Internet & Society, joined Aaron Shaw at The Berkman Center for a
conversation on
"The Internet, Young Adults and Political Participation around the 2008 Presidential Elections".
Download the
MediaBerkman Podcast
here.
The Chronicle of Higher Education's
Wired Campus blog featured Web Use Project research and referenced Ericka Menchen-Trevino and Eszter Hargittai's paper
Young Adults' Credibility Assessment of Wikipedia in its
article
on students' awareness of Wikipedia's editing process.
(Download the paper here.)
January, 2011
Google Tech Talks featured a presentation by Eszter Hargittai on Online Engagement and variation in contributions to participatory Web sites.
November, 2010
The Society Pages' Jon Smajda interviewed Eszter Hargittai on inequalities in digital skill levels and why they matter. (Download the interview here.)
August, 2010
The paper that danah boyd and Eszter Hargittai co-authored on college students' practices regarding Facebook privacy settings received press coverage in such outlets as RWW on the NYTimes, Ars Technica, Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Economist blog and others. (See links to the individual pieces on our Press page.)
July, 2010
Our paper Trust Online: Young Adults' Evaluation of Web Content received lots of press coverage this week including in such publications as Inside Higher Ed, Ars Technica, CBC, The Huffington Post and the Chicago Sun-Times. (See links to the individual pieces on our Press page.)
July, 2010
Eszter Hargittai appeared on WTTW's Chicago Tonight to discuss Managing Your Online Persona.
Temple University professor Renee Hobbs quoted Eszter Hargittai in an article about computers in the home & kids' learning.
The Chronicle of Higher Education, Ars Technica, and Gawker have covered our work about our latest paper on social network site usage outcomes.
February, 2010
Eszter Hargittai and the Web Use Project were featured in the Northwestern University Annual Research Report for 2009.
Link to the pdf (345 KB)
Video of the plenary panel at the Digital Media & Learning conference, including participation by Eszter Hargittai.
The New Republic mentioned Web Use Project research on teenagers and Twitter use. (permanent link)
Web Use Project research was cited in a Washington Post article about Twitter use among teenagers. (permanent link)
Forbes.com quoted Eszter Hargittai in a piece entitled "Is blogging a slog? Some young people think so." (permanent link)
January, 2010
Eszter Hargittai spoke on "Skill Matters: Explaining Different Levels of Online Engagement" at the Oxford Internet Institute. (event link)
December, 2009
Eszter Hargittai was quoted in a piece called "Cyber begging becomes popular" from The Chicago Tribune. (permanent link)
October, 2009
Inside Higher Ed interviewed Eszter Hargittai about her new edited book, "Research Confidential: Solutions to Problems Most Social Scientists Pretend They Never Have." (permanent link)
Marketing Magazine online covered Web Use Project research on Facebook, MySpace, and social division. (permanent link)
The Chronicle of Higher Education covered Eszter Hargittai’s and Chris Karr’s text-messaging study in a piece titled "Text Messaging Shows Promise as a Survey Tool."
September, 2009
Eszter Hargittai received a Google Research Award for a study of how users search for information about complex health matters online.
July, 2009
Piece covering Web Use Project research was among top 10 most emailed technology articles on NYTimes site: http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/does-social-networking-breed-social-division/.
A grant from the Hiatt Fund at Northwestern will support a project on how different types of people search for jobs in our digital age.
Some recent findings about Facebook vs MySpace use among a group of diverse first-year college students: http://crookedtimber.org/2009/07/08/popularity-of-facebook-and-myspace-changes-but-ses-differences-in-use-persist/.
June, 2009
Eszter Hargittai presented on Internet Skill Matters:The Role of User Savvy in Different Levels of Online Engagement at the Luncheon Speaker Series of Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society on June 23, 2009.
May, 2009
Eszter Hargittai presented three talks at the International Communication Association meetings. One of these was presented jointly with graduate student co-authors Lindsay Fullerton, Ericka Menchen-Trevino and Kristin Thomas. This co-authored paper on “Trust on the Web” received the TOP 2 Faculty Paper Prize from ICA’s Communication and Technology Division.
Eszter Hargittai spoke on "A Typology of Social Network Site Usage"? at The Networked Self Conference held at the University of Illinois, Chicago on May 20, 2009
Eszter Hargittai talked to Northwestern colleagues and some invited guests about work in the lab in a talk entitled "The Web Use Project, Exploring the Relationship between User Characteristics and Online Behavior"?. This meeting was held at the Northwestern Law School in Chicago on May 20, 2009.
Eszter Hargittai gave a guest lecture on "Data Challenges of Studying New Millennium Learners"? at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris on May 18, 2009.
Eszter Hargittai gave a talk on "Beyond Gigs of Log Data: How the Study of New Media Can Benefit from Old Methods"? at the Cambridge Colloquium on Complexity and Social Networks Seminar. The seminar took place at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government on May 11, 2009.
April, 2009
Eszter Hargittai was one of three panelists speaking at the President's Symposium at Bates College on “The Teaching and Learning Shift” in Lewiston, Maine on April 30, 2009.
Eszter Hargittai gave a talk entitled "New Opportunities, Old Patterns? Participation in the Public Sphere in the Age of Digital Media"? at Harvard’s Frontiers of Cultural Sociology Mini-Conference on April 24, 2009.
Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society hosted a Gender and Technology Conference where Eszter Hargittai spoke about "Gender and IT Research"? on April 18, 2009.
Eszter Hargittai gave a presentation on "The Skill Divide in Internet Use” at the meeting on “User-Generated Content 3.0: From Thread to Opportunity"? hosted by the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information of the Columbia Business School in New York City on April 17, 2009.
Eszter Hargittai presented "Why Digital Inequality Matters"? at the Connections: Media Studies and the New Interdisciplinarity meeting at the University of Virginia on April 4, 2009.
March, 2009
Eszter Hargittai gave a talk on "Connected Lives? Limits to the Internet Meeting Its Potential"? as part of the Opening Ceremonies for Northwestern University, Qatar. The talk took place in Doha, Qatar on March 23, 2009.
A new project is to be conducted in collaboration with Russell Neuman of the University of Michigan.
Eszter Hargittai received a grant from Northwestern's School of Communication Innovations Fund for a project on how Americans learn about current events in digital age
February, 2009
Eszter Hargittai presented "Digital Na(t)ives? The Role of Skill in Internet Use"? at the Harvard/MIT Economic Sociology Workshop in Cambridge, Massachusetts on February 11, 2009.
December, 2008
The Internet and Politics Conference at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society featured the following session: Examining the Networked Public Sphere in Recent Elections, A Conversation with Yochai Benkler and Eszter Hargittai.
Eszter Hargittai presented "Digital Promise or Digital Peril? Differences in Young Adults' Internet Use"? at the speaker series of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University on December 9, 2008.
November, 2008
Eszter Hargittai gave a talk on "Refined Approaches to the Digital Divide"? at a meeting organized by the Harris School of Public Policy of the University of Chicago on November 20, 2008 in Chicago.
Eszter Hargittai gave a presentation on "The Role of Social Context and Skill in Internet Use” at the University of Zurich in Switzerland on Nov 12, 2008.
October, 2008
As part of a small meeting of communication scholars organized at the University of Athens, Eszter Hargittai spoke about “Digital Inequality” in Athens, Greece, on November 12, 2008.
Eszter Hargittai spoke about her collaboration with Nicole Joseph on "New Media, Same Old Story? Young People's News Consumption in a Digital Age"? at the Internet and Democracy Workshop at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet & Society on October 29, 2008.
Eszter Hargittai participated in a panel on Blogging & the Academy at UC Irvine during the Public Spheres, Blogospheres meeting on October 23, 2008.
Eszter Hargittai presented a paper on credibility research to the Project Zero team at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education on October 8, 2008.
September, 2008
We're hiring undergraduate research assistants. Students enrolled at Northwestern and Harvard are eligible. http://eszter.com/wupjob/
Our work is mentioned in the engaging piece “Generational Myth” by Siva Vaidhyanathan in the Chronicle of Higher Ed.
Thanks to a recent gift from Nokia Research the Web Use Project will be able to do more work on the social implications & applications of mobile technologies, September 3, 2008.
August, 2008
Eszter Hargittai, and Yu-li Patrick Hsieh presented their paper at the American Sociological Association conference in Boston, MA on August 4, 2008.
July, 2008
Eszter Hargittai is presenting a paper on Social Network Site Typologies at the American Sociological Association meetings (co-author:Patrick Hsieh).
The Web Use Project research group now has a Twitter account to keep people posted of updates.
March, 2008
Eszter Hargittai gave a campus-wide guest lecture at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities on March 13, 2008.
December, 2007
Eszter Hargittai gave a guest lecture at the Central European University in Budapest on December 5, 2007.
November, 2007
Eszter Hargittai gave a guest talk in Nicole Zillien’s class at the University of Trier on November 28, 2007.
Eszter Hargittai presented on “Differences in Internet User Expertise and Experiences” at the annual meetings of the National Communication Association in Chicago on November 17, 2007.
Eszter Hargittai’s paper exploring the predictors of social network site usage appears in the special issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication edited by danah boyd and Nicole Ellison, November 2007.
October, 2007
Eszter Hargittai delivered a presentation to Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society about young adults’ online uses and skills on October 30, 2007.
Eszter Hargittai spoke about the Digital Reproduction of Inequality in the Colloquium series of the Communication Studies Department at the University of Michigan on Thursday, October 25, 2007.
Eszter Hargittai and Peter Miller were awarded a one-year $300,000 grant by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to assess the feasibility of a longitudinal survey on digital media use by youth.
Jason Gallo presented on the role of discourse at the NSF and the funding of large-scale ICT and new media programs at the Society for the History of Technology conference in Washington, DC on October 19.
Dan Li and Gina Walejko presented their paper at the AoIR conference in Vancouver on Oct. 18, 2007.
Eszter Hargittai and Gina Walejko presented their paper at the AoIR conference in Vancouver on Oct. 18, 2007.
Gina Walejko presented her paper at the AoIR conference in Vancouver on Oct. 18, 2007.
At the 2007 TPRC meeting, Eszter Hargittai was appointed a member of the TPRC Program Committee for the 2008 and 2009 conferences.
Former affiliates have recently taken jobs at Google (Kathrina Manalac), Leonie Industries (Waleeta Canon), and the Toji Trading Group (Viktor Domazet).
Eszter Hargittai and Gina Walejko presented a talk at the Culture & Society workshop, on Oct. 11, 2007.
Dave Huffaker presented his paper at 3rd International Conference on e-Social Science Doctoral Colloquium in Ann Arbor, MI on October 7.