‎‎Microsoft's renowned social media researcher danah boyd (yes, the lower case is intentional) is in the news again since Fortune magazine announced her as One to Watch.

danah is currently off doing fieldwork, so we decided to run our Microspotting interview with her from early 2009 - shortly after she started working for Microsoft.

How's it going getting settled into NERD, aka Microsoft's New England Research & Development center?
I haven't done enough nesting yet, but so far, so good. mostly, it's a crash course in setting up computers, balancing meetings, figuring out hierarchies, learning the intranet … a radical change from the last six months of never leaving my couch just writing, writing, writing. ‎

Right: you're not only transitioning into a new job and new city -- but also out of dissertation mode. How's that going?
Yup. New city, new job, far far far far far more human interaction. I mean, in the last six months of my dissertation, i really didn't see anyone but my partner. I was a COMPLETE hermit. Mandatory isolation is required training to be an academic. That said, I'm loving the people at NERD, so it’s a welcome re-intro into civilization. I mean, they’re just as geeky as I am!

So, give me a glimpse into the range of researchers on your team.
Well, we have 7 full-timers including physicists, a mathematician, a cryptographer, a game theorist and a theoretical computer scientist — or at least I think that's what they are. They label me a sociologist which always makes me giggle, so i can't imagine how badly i'm doing labeling them. ‎‎

You research social interactions on the web, but aren't a sociologist. Do you identify more with information systems?
Scholarly labels come with a lot of baggage -- they mean specific things about method, theory, framing. I'm pretty darn interdisciplinary in my approach to scholarship. My work in the last few years would be closest to anthropology, but most anthropologists wouldn't count me in their club. Rick Rashid calls me a computer scientist which just makes me ROFL. Honestly, i avoid those labels like the plague, but here, it’s kinda tricky.

I'm super curious about your decision to come to Microsoft -- especially given the fact that some in the social media industry have been known to hate on Microsoft ...
I wrote a rant on my blog about why i chose this lab. I don't really care about what the industry has to say about MSFT. I’m here because it’s the most interesting place i could be at.

Which was rougher: defending your dissertation or defending your choice to work for Microsoft?
Honestly, I can't even compare my dissertation or job. . . both pale in comparison to defending the Enhancing Child Safety and Online Technologies Task Force Report that I put out. It’s been complete hell trying to get politicians to accept data that doesn’t match their worldview. It made everything else feel like cake.

What do you like about working here?
What I really care about is that the company values research. Microsoft Research is hands down the most impressive research institution i’ve seen. Even though my research has product implications, i’m not a product person, but i love being in a place where my work funnels into products. I also think a lot of folks underestimate the role that MSFT plays in shaping policy, both explicitly and implicitly. I hope my research also shapes policy going forward.

Interesting. What policies are you most curious about impacting?
Well, right now, the policies related to youth and the internet … but in general, policies and practices that involve information sharing and communication. There's always an interaction between companies and policy. At the most mundane, companies have to figure out how to implement policies that are put into place. But companies also shape how those policies are formed, how they are thought about, and how they are implemented. MSFT has played a major role in many different policies and it's been shaped by them too.

So, once you get settled in, what are you must excited about sinking your teeth into, research wise?
Mostly, i've been puzzling about boundaries, especially around the notions of public/private and how people manage tensions of audiences online. Everyone's up in arms saying that the kids don't get privacy. And of course there's the old battle cry that privacy is dead. But i think that both are dead wrong. I think that privacy is playing out in new ways that are connected to the dynamics of social media. So, i want to explore that. In the short-term, it'll mostly mean looking at things like Twitter and Facebook Status Updates and whatnot, but i’m more into the bigger issues than those particular technologies.

LINKS: • a longer interview with danah: research.microsoft.com • danah's website: danah.org • danah's blog: zephoria.org/thoughts • danah's research: danah.org/papers • danah's twitter: twitter.com/zephoria