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

Her award-winning book, Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms (Princeton University Press, 2020) focuses on the case of web journalism, analyzing the growing importance of audience data in web newsrooms in the U.S. and France. Drawing on ethnographic methods, Angèle shows how American and French journalists make sense of traffic numbers in different ways, which in turn has distinct effects on the production of news in the two countries. She discussed it on the New Books Network podcast.

In a related study, she analyzed the construction, institutionalization, and reception of predictive algorithms in the U.S. criminal justice system, building on her previous work on the determinants of criminal sentencing in French courts.

Her new book, Follow Me: Influencers and the Contradictions of Platform Labor, is an ethnographic study of content creators on social media platforms. Drawing on case studies ranging from vegan YouTubers to “dad” influencers and influencer marketers, it shows how structural forces reproduce precarity and inequality in social media careers, while also nudging influencers toward interpersonal “drama” and sometimes the production of problematic online content.

Angèle received her PhD in Sociology from Princeton University and the EHESS (Paris). She is an affiliate at the Data & Society Research Institute, the Center on Digital Culture and Society (University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School for Communication), and the Médialab (Sciences Po Paris).

For more info: angelechristin.com