Race, Justice, and Technology

Deen Freelon is an Associate Professor in the School of Media and Journalism. His research covers two major areas of scholarship: 1) political expression through digital media and 2) data science and computational methods for analyzing large digital datasets. 

He has authored or co-authored more than 30 journal articles, book chapters and public reports, in addition to co-editing one scholarly book. He has served as principal investigator on grants from the Knight Foundation, the Spencer Foundation and the U.S. Institute of Peace. 

He has written research-grade software to calculate intercoder reliability for content analysis (ReCal), analyze large-scale network data from social media (TSM), and collect data from Facebook (fb_scrape_public). He formerly taught at American University in Washington, D.C.

Cierra Robson is an alumnae of Princeton University and current doctoral student in sociology and social policy at Harvard University. Prior to beginning her Ph.D program, Cierra worked with Facebook on their Digital Rights Operations team and Intellectual Property Operations team. 

Ms. Robson has also spent time at the Berkmein-Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University as an Assembly Fellow. Ms. Robson's research interests include the ways in which technological advancements impact the American racial order. She aims to use her research to conceptualize what meaningful regulation of Big Tech looks like.