Caitlin Petre studies the social processes behind the digital datasets and algorithms that increasingly govern the contemporary world. Using qualitative research methods such as ethnographic observation and in-depth interviewing, she maps the complex relationships between digital analytics, the social actors who create them, and the established experts who make use of them.
Petre’s book, All the News That’s Fit to Click (published September 2021 from Princeton University Press), is a behind-the-scenes look at how performance analytics are transforming the work of journalism. Petre’s scholarly work has been published in Social Media & Society, the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Sociologica, and Digital Journalism. She has been featured or quoted in popular publications such as the New York Times, WIRED, Study Hall, Columbia Journalism Review, and the Atlantic. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from New York University, is currently a faculty affiliate at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.
