Judith Stefania Donath (born May 7, 1962) is an American computer scientist who is a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center, and the founder of the ''Sociable Media Group'' at the

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fi ...

. She has written papers on various aspects of the Internet and its social impact, such as Internet society and community, interfaces, virtual identity issues, and other forms of collaboration that have become manifest with the advent of connected computing. Her research work includes issues centered on "identity and deception in online communities" and the creation of multiple virtual personae. In 1999 she researched the presence of deception in the online identities of

Usenet Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...

users, as well as the reconstruction of the personality of an individual using data gathered from both online and offline encounters.

Career

Donath obtained her bachelor's degree in history from

Yale Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...

and her master's and Ph.D. degrees in media arts and sciences from

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

. Her work includes the design and development of educational software and experimental media. On October 10, 1995, while still a Ph.D. candidate at MIT, she helped organize a celebration of the tenth anniversary of the

by conceiving a mass online collaboration project which featured the construction of a large website by worldwide contributors. The event was named ''A Day in the Life of Cyberspace'' and is an early example of

mass collaboration Mass collaboration is a form of collective action that occurs when large numbers of people work independently on a single project, often modular in its nature. Such projects typically take place on the internet using social software and computer-s ...

on the Internet. Her pioneering work includes the first postcard service, named ''The Electric Postcard'', and the first interactive art show, titled ''Portraits in Cyberspace''. Her recent work includes directing the exhibit ''Id/Entity'' which includes collaborative works on the subject of the transformation of

portraiture A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face is always predominant. In arts, a portrait may be represented as half body and even full body. If the subject in full body better re ...

through the use of modern computer technology. In her 2000 book ''Being Real'', Donath explores the problems of

cognition Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

arising from the online behavioral dynamics of the interaction between human and possibly automated avatars in a virtual world. She has investigated the effect of online social media on society as regards the public display of the social interconnections between the members of the online communities as a sort of "Public Displays of Connection". Her work on sociable media has applications in the field of

semiotics Semiotics ( ) is the systematic study of sign processes and the communication of meaning. In semiotics, a sign is defined as anything that communicates intentional and unintentional meaning or feelings to the sign's interpreter. Semiosis is a ...

. On the subject of

telerobotics Telerobotics is the area of robotics concerned with the control of semi-autonomous robots from a distance, chiefly using television, wireless networks (like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and the Deep Space Network) or tethered connections. It is a combinatio ...

, Donath argues that the remote manipulation afforded by the discipline may act as a desensitizing agent because the identity and human characteristics of the remote subjects of the telerobotic operation remain unseen by the human teleoperator of the robot. She has also researched the

ethnography Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. It explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining ...

of online communities. Her work includes the application of

architectural Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and construction, constructi ...

principles to the design of the social interaction environment of online communities in a kind of

virtual city A virtual world (also called a virtual space or spaces) is a computer-simulated environment which may be populated by many simultaneous users who can create a personal avatar and independently explore the virtual world, participate in its acti ...

. She has investigated best practices for online communication and their relation to issues of embodiment, gender, sexuality and identity. Donath has explored the use of artificial emotions in avatars and their potential use in

online advertising Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising that uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. ...

. She predicts that artificial avatars will possess "suites of emotions" comparable to an emotional wardrobe, from which they can pick the emotion they need to "wear", depending on the circumstances. That way they can be used in advertising campaigns to target their intended audience more effectively. In her essay "Mediated Faces" she analyzes the role of facial representation and interpretation in an online communication environment, suggesting that there are wider possibilities for online facial representation through the use of computer-enhanced environments than a simple linear pictorial representation of the human face. She has compared the anonymity of online flaming to the anonymity of vandalizing in real life. Donath spoke on identity, anonymity, and the wiki at the August 2006

Wikimania Wikimania is the Wikimedia movement's annual conference, organized by Wikimedian, volunteers and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. Topics of presentations and discussions include Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, other wikis, open-source ...

conference. She returned as

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

Publications (A selection)

* Donath, Judith: Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. In M. Smith and P. Kollock (eds.) Communities in Cyberspace. London: Routledge, 1998 * Fernanda Viégas, Judith Donath: Chat Circles. ACM Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (CHI), 1999 * Judith Donath, Karrie Karahalios, Fernanda Viégas: Persistent Conversations. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 4 (4), 1999 * Donath, Judith: Being Real. In (K. Goldberg, ed.) The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and Telepistemology in the Age of the Internet. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000 * Donath, Judith: 1964 Ford Falcon. In (Turkle, S., Ed) Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007 * The Social Machine: Designs for Living Online (The MIT Press), 2014, ISBN 978-0262027014

References

External links

Judith Donath's homepage

''Signals, Truth, and Design''
YouTube video of Donath "Google Tech Talk" * {{DEFAULTSORT:Donath, Judith Living people 1962 births American computer scientists Human–computer interaction researchers American women computer scientists Yale College alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni Berkman Fellows MIT Media Lab people 21st-century American women scientists