Eszter Hargittai is Professor and Chair of Internet Use and Society at the Institute of Communication and Media Research of the University of Zurich. Previously, she was the Delaney Family Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, where is remains affiliated. She has been a fellow in residence at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford (2006/07) and Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society (2008/09). She has also held visiting positions at the the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland), University of Queensland (Australia), the University of Vienna (Austria), and Trinity College Dublin (Ireland).
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. She has looked at these questions in the domains of information seeking, health content, political participation, job search, the sharing of creative content and privacy management, among others.
Hargittai's work has received awards from several professional associations including the International Communication Association, the National Communication Association, the American Sociological Association, and the Eastern Sociological Society. For her teaching, she received the School of Communication’a Galbut Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award at Northwestern. Her research has been supported by the NSF, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Nokia, Google, Facebook, and Merck, among others. She has published 90 scholarly papers and several oped pieces. She has given over 160 invited talks in 15 countries on four continents including over 15 keynotes, and has presented at numerous conferences.
Hargittai is editor of Research Confidential: Solutions to Problems Most Social Scientists Pretend They Never Have (U. Michigan Press, 2009) and co-editor of Digital Research Confidential (The MIT Press, 2015). She is currently working on a book on managing your online reputation with forthcoming with Princeton University Press. She is also editing the Handbook of Digital Inequality forthcoming from Edward Elgar Publishing and another methods book forthcoming with Columbia University Press. She writes an academic career advice column at Inside Higher Ed called Ph.Do.
She has won some photo contests, has had her photography featured in books and calendars, and people she doesn't know have been willing to part with their money to own some of her paintings.
She tweets @eszter.
