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Hello Internet People! I am Dr. Michael Ann DeVito (she/her). I’m an interdisciplinary social/behavioral scientist based in Human/Computer Interaction and Social Computing, and I’m all about making our modern platform infrastructure work for the people who depend on it the most. Sometimes that’s by using HCI and psychology techniques to better understand how we adapt to these platforms, and how platforms can help us out with better design (and – let’s face it – better behavior). Sometimes that’s by doing values critique or participatory design work with my own Queer community to help correct major issues for marginalized groups while proposing ways we can take back control of our platform spaces. Either way, I believe our lives are mediated by online platforms, and we have a right to insist they improve.

Put more formally, I am a researcher, a teacher, and a deeply interested party in the social science of media, cognition, and the Internet. I exist in an interdisciplinary space which touches on information science, human-computer interaction, and communication studies, and I also draw heavily on psychology/cognitive/behavioral science literature and methods.

I am currently a Postdoctoral Computing Innovation Fellow in the Department of Information Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, where I work in the Identity Lab.

My research centers around how humans adapt to the complex algorithmically-driven systems that increasingly surround us, including how we come to understand these systems, and how they affect major social processes such as the formation and presentation of the self-concept. I am also interested in how we can build technology to return agency to the individual user who is now awash in these powerful systems, as well as the emerging effects of personified/anthropomorphized technology, including virtual assistants and rudimentary artificial intelligence.

To deconstruct that very dense last paragraph: I want to know how you understand really complex things like the Facebook news feed, and how that understanding might change the way you think about others and yourself and the way you get your information (and what all that does to our society). I’m also interested in what happens when we start seeing computer-based agents more like trustworthy friends.

I’m also particularly interested in how these emerging issues play out with populations that don’t always get included in a lot of early work, and that have different concerns than the average college student sample, such as the LGBTQ+ community and early adolescents. I often take a triage approach to picking populations for my studies, and try to prioritize marginalized communities, who may rely more heavily on social technologies and therefore suffer outsized harm when they are not mindfully designed. Frequently, I act as a member-researcher in my own marginalized communities, using my positionality as a transgender, neurodivergent lesbian to inform my work and make deep community connections.

Prior to coming to CU Boulder, I earned my PhD in Media, Technology, and Society at Northwestern University‘s School of Communication, where I also specialized in Cognitive Science and worked in the Social Media Lab. Before that, I worked as a Graduate Teaching Assistant at George Washington University‘s School of Media and Public Affairs. I also worked as Managing Editor for GW’s new media sustainability collaborative Planet Forward, where I directed the internship and education programs in addition to running the editorial department. While I was at GW, I earned both an M.A. in Media and Public Affairs and a B.A. in Journalism and Mass Communication.

In the very small sliver of my life that exists outside the bounds of academia, I’m mostly into cats (all kinds), robots (friendly), space (outer), guitar (loud), and overly-involved roleplaying games (wizards).

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