Safiya Noble facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Safiya Noble
Alma mater	California State University, Fresno University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Known for	Algorithms of Oppression
Awards	MacArthur Fellow
Scientific career
Institutions	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign University of California, Los Angeles University of Southern California
Thesis	Searching for black girls: old traditions in new media (2012)

Safiya Umoja Noble is a well-known professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She teaches about social sciences, gender studies, African American studies, and information studies. She leads important centers at UCLA that study race and technology. She also looks at how data is used in society.

Professor Noble wrote a famous book called Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. This book explains how search engines can sometimes show unfair or biased results. Many people have read and talked about her book. In 2021, she won a special award called the MacArthur Fellowship. This award recognized her amazing work on how computer programs (algorithms) can be unfair.

She helps groups that protect people from online harassment. She also gives advice to many civil and human rights organizations. She is a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute. In 2022, she received the first NAACP-Archewell Digital Civil Rights Award. She was also chosen to be part of a group at the University of Oxford that looks at artificial intelligence (AI). In 2020, she joined a global council at the World Economic Forum that focuses on AI for people.

Early Life and School

Safiya Noble grew up in Fresno, California. She went to the Roosevelt School of the Arts. Later, she studied Sociology at California State University, Fresno. She focused on African American and Ethnic Studies.

While in college, Noble was very active in student politics. She protested against unfair systems and worked for equal rights for all people. She was part of student groups that helped make changes on campus and across California. After college, she worked for over ten years in marketing and advertising.

Noble then went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for her advanced degrees. She earned both her Masters and Ph.D. in Library and Information Science. Her Ph.D. paper in 2012 was titled Searching for black girls: old traditions in new media. In this paper, she explored how gender and race appear on new technology platforms.

Her Career

Professor Noble started her teaching career at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She taught in different departments, including African-American Studies and Media Studies. In 2014, she joined the University of California, Los Angeles's Information Studies department.

She received the UCLA Early Career Award in 2016. The same year, she became a Hellman Fellow. In 2018, she earned academic tenure at UCLA. This means she became a permanent professor.

From 2017 to 2019, Noble was a visiting professor at the University of Southern California. There, she focused on how digital media platforms affect human and civil rights. She also looked at how these issues could be taught in science and technology fields.

In September 2020, Noble was named one of 25 members of the Real Facebook Oversight Board. This group watches over Facebook's actions. In October 2020, she talked with Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex. They discussed the problems that technology can cause. Meghan mentioned Noble's book, Algorithms of Oppression, for showing how digital spaces shape our ideas about race.

In 2021, Safiya Noble was given the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship.

Her Research

Professor Noble's research looks at how the Internet affects society. Her work combines ideas from different fields, especially sociology. She studies how digital media connects with topics like race, gender, culture, power, and technology.

Her knowledge about unfair computer programs (algorithmic discrimination) and technology bias is well-known. Major news outlets like Rolling Stone, The Guardian, and The New York Times have covered her work. She has also written about how large technology companies affect public services.

Her research also explores how gender, technology, and culture influence the design of the internet. Noble has helped edit books like Emotions, Technology & Design and The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Culture and Class Online. She also helps edit a section of the journal Feminist Media Studies. She is part of several groups that advise academic journals.

Algorithms of Oppression

Noble's first book, Algorithms of Oppression, came out in 2018. It was published by NYU Press. The book has been reviewed in many journals and was named one of the New York Public Library's Best Books for Adults in 2018.

The book explains how search engines, which seem neutral, can have biases against people of color. It shows how racism, especially anti-Black racism, is created and spread by the internet. Noble is concerned about how technology companies use information about the Black community for money.

She focuses on companies like Google and Facebook. She explains how their algorithms keep information hidden. For example, when you type something into a search engine, it's not clear how the results are chosen. Her work aims to change how marginalized people are seen in technology. She has also given many talks and interviews about her book.

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See also

In Spanish: Safiya Noble para niños