Ethan Zuckerman Explained

Ethan Zuckerman
Birth Date:4 January 1973
Notable Students:Joy Buolamwini[1]
Nationality:American
Education:Williams College (BA)
Occupation:Media scholar

Ethan Zuckerman (born January 4, 1973)[2] is an American media scholar, blogger, and Internet activist. He was the director of the MIT Center for Civic Media, and Associate Professor of the Practice in Media Arts and Sciences at MIT[3] until May 2020,[4] and the author of the 2013 book , which won the Zócalo Book Prize.[5] In 2020, he became an associate professor of public policy, communication and information at the University of Massachusetts.[6]

Education

Zuckerman is a graduate of Williams College, where he received a B.A. in Philosophy in 1993.[7] He then spent a year on a Fulbright scholarship at the University of Legon, Ghana and the National Theatre of Ghana in Accra, where he studied ethnomusicology and percussion.

Career

Zuckerman was one of the first staff members of Tripod.com, one of the first successful "dot com" enterprises, where he worked from 1994 to 1999. There, he was in charge of the design and the implementation of the website, which at that time marketed content and services to recent college graduates. The business model of this website was exclusively based on advertising. After one of the website's major advertisers complained that one of their banner advertisements had appeared on a page that celebrated anal sex, Zuckerman imagined a way to associate an ad with a user's page without putting it directly on the page. His solution was to open a new dedicated window with only the ad in it. While Zuckerman claims having only written the code to open a new window, he is credited as the inventor of the pop-up ad.[8]

In 2000, he founded Geekcorps[2] and 2004, Global Voices[9] where he sits on its board.[10]

He won the MIT Technology Review "Technology in the Service of Humanity" award in 2002 for his work on Geekcorps.[11] Zuckerman has been a senior researcher at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, where he is also a long-time fellow. His work at the Berkman Center has included research into global media attention,[12] [13] as well as the co-founding of Global Voices in collaboration with Rebecca MacKinnon. For some years he was also a contributing writer for Worldchanging.com, where he served as president of the board of directors.

In January 2007, he joined the inaugural Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board.

In 2008, he coined the cute cat theory of digital activism.

In 2011, he was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers, in which he stated the Best idea is "The world isn't flat and globalization is only beginning, which means we have time to change what we're doing and get it right".[14] Also in September of that year, he became the director of the MIT Center for Civic Media.[15]

Zuckerman was an Open Society Global Board member, and also sits on the board of directors of Ushahidi,[16] Global Voices,[17] and the Ghanaian journalism training nonprofit, PenPlusBytes.[18]

He was interviewed in the 2015 web documentary about internet privacy, Do Not Track.[19]

On July 1, 2016, Zuckerman was appointed Associate Professor of the Practice in Media Arts and Sciences at MIT.

In 2019, revelations of Media Lab director Joi Ito's connections with Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender, shed light on the extent of monetary gifts from Epstein to the Media Lab and Ito's startups outside of MIT. Zuckerman resigned from his position[20] as director of the MIT Center for Civic Media, in protest of the Media Lab's involvement with Epstein.[21] He joined the faculty of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in April 2020.[6] [22]

In 2024 Zuckerman, in his academic role, brought a suit, represented by lawyers from Knight First Amendment Institute, for declaratory relief under section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act. He proposed to use a piece of software similar to Unfollow Everything to evaluate user response to having control of their social media feeds.[23]

Personal life

Zuckerman resides in Lanesborough, Massachusetts, and has a son with Rachel Barenblat.[24] On October 7, 2022, Zuckerman married Amy Price.[25]

Works by Zuckerman

See also

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. MA. 2017. MIT. Gender shades : intersectional phenotypic and demographic evaluation of face datasets and gender classifiers. Joy Adowaa. Buolamwini. 1721.1/114068. 1026503582. dspace.mit.edu.
  2. Visualize World Geeks . Paul . Boutin . . 8 . August 2000 . 8 . Ethan Zuckerman ... the high-energy 27-year-old ...".
  3. Web site: Ethan Zuckerman Appointed Associate Professor of the Practice in Media Arts and Sciences . MIT Media Lab . July 1, 2016 . December 3, 2016 . https://web.archive.org/web/20171004034153/https://www.media.mit.edu/news/spotlights/2016/05/ethan-zuckerman-appointed-associate-professor-practice-media-arts-and-sciences . October 4, 2017 . dead .
  4. Web site: On me, and the Media Lab … My heart's in Accra. August 21, 2019 . 2020-07-30. en-US.
  5. Web site: Ethan Zuckerman Wins Zócalo's Fourth Annual Book Prize . Zócalo Public Square . April 3, 2014.
  6. Web site: Internet Pioneer Ethan Zuckerman Named to Interdisciplinary Faculty Appointment at UMass Amherst. 2020-07-30. Office of News & Media Relations UMass Amherst. en.
  7. Web site: Ethan Zuckerman . . October 10, 2014.
  8. The Internet's Original Sin: It's not too late to ditch the ad-based business model and build a better web. . Zuckerman . Ethan . August 14, 2014 . The Atlantic . August 20, 2014.
  9. Web site: Ethan Zuckerman | Berkman Center . Zuckerman . Ethan . Berkman Center for Internet & Society . April 22, 2006.
  10. Web site: Board · Global Voices . 2022-04-09 . Global Voices . en.
  11. Web site: 2002 TR100. 2020-07-30. MIT Technology Review. en.
  12. Zuckerman . E. . 10.2139/ssrn.487943 . Global Attention Profiles - A Working Paper: First Steps Towards a Quantitative Approach to the Study of Media Attention . 2004 . 34696767 .
  13. Zuckerman . E. . 10.1007/s11127-007-9200-y . Meet the bridgebloggers . Public Choice . 134 . 47–65 . 2007 . 1–2 . 55806852 .
  14. The FP Top 100 Global Thinkers . Foreign Policy . November 28, 2011 . April 14, 2012 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20120416082704/http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/11/28/the_fp_top_100_global_thinkers?page=0,44#thinker73 . April 16, 2012 .
  15. Web site: Ethan Zuckerman, cyberscholar and activist, to lead MIT Center for Civic Media . MIT News . June 30, 2011 . August 20, 2014.
  16. Web site: Board of Directors . ushahidi.com . April 16, 2012 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20120419215146/http://ushahidi.com/about-us/team/board-of-directors . April 19, 2012 .
  17. Web site: Board of Directors . globalvoices.org . April 16, 2012.
  18. Web site: About Penplusbytes: Board of Directors . penplusbytes.org . April 16, 2012 . https://web.archive.org/web/20130727222124/http://www.penplusbytes.org/detail.cfm?prodcatID=1&tblNewsCatID=23&tblNewsID=143 . July 27, 2013 . dead .
  19. News: Do Not Track: an online, interactive documentary about who's watching you. Davis. Nicola. April 14, 2015. The Guardian. April 15, 2015.
  20. Web site: On me, and the Media Lab. Ethan. Zuckerman. August 21, 2019. Medium.
  21. Web site: Head of MIT Media Lab faces crisis that tears at lab he helped elevate - The Boston Globe. BostonGlobe.com.
  22. Web site: Next steps … My heart's in Accra. April 28, 2020 . 2020-07-30. en-US.
  23. Web site: Why I'm suing Facebook in US federal court .
  24. News: Clatworthy . Ben . Meet the man who invented pop-up ads . . en . 2022-04-09 . 0140-0460.
  25. Web site: Zuckerman . Ethan . October 22, 2022 . Our wedding, October 7-9, 2022 . November 16, 2022.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Ethan Zuckerman".

Except where otherwise indicated, Everything.Explained.Today is © Copyright 2009-2024, A B Cryer, All Rights Reserved. Cookie policy.