Safiya Noble facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Safiya Noble
Education	California State University, Fresno (BA) University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (MLIS, PhD)
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 leading expert who studies how technology, especially search engines, can sometimes be unfair. She is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). There, she teaches about how society, gender, and information connect with technology.

Professor Noble directs the UCLA Center on Race & Digital Justice. This center looks at how race and digital technology affect each other. She also helps lead the Minderoo Initiative on Tech & Power. This group studies how technology holds power in our world.

She wrote a very important book called Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. This book explains how search engines can show unfair results. In 2021, she won a special award called the MacArthur Fellowship. This award recognized her amazing work on how computer programs can be biased.

Noble helps many groups that work for civil and human rights. She is on the board of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative. This group helps people who face online bullying. In 2022, she received the first NAACP-Archewell Digital Civil Rights Award. This award honors her work in digital civil rights.

In 2020, she joined a group at the University of Oxford. This group looked at how AI (Artificial Intelligence) can be used for good. She was also nominated to a global council on AI for humanity at the World Economic Forum.

Early Life and Education

Growing Up in California

Safiya Noble grew up in Fresno, California. She went to California State University, Fresno. There, she studied sociology, which is the study of human society. She also focused on African American studies and ethnic studies.

While in college, Noble was very active in campus politics. She protested against apartheid, which was a system of racial separation. She also worked to promote fairness for all races and equality for all genders.

Her Work Before Graduate School

After graduating, Noble worked for over ten years. She worked in multicultural marketing, advertising, and public relations. This experience helped her understand how different groups of people are shown in media.

Graduate Studies and Research

Noble then went to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She earned both a master's degree and a Ph.D. in library and information science. Her Ph.D. research, finished in 2012, was called Searching for Black Girls: Old Traditions in New Media. In her research, she looked at how gender and race appear on technology platforms.

Career Highlights

Early Academic Roles

Noble started as a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She taught in departments like African-American Studies and Media and Cinema Studies. In 2014, she joined the University of California, Los Angeles's Department of Information Studies.

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 there.

Focus on Digital Media and Rights

From 2017 to 2019, Noble was a visiting professor at the University of Southern California. At USC, she focused on how digital media platforms affect human and civil rights. She also worked on including these important issues in STEM education. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.

Important Public Engagements

On September 25, 2020, Noble was named one of 25 members of the Real Facebook Oversight Board. This is an independent group that watches over Facebook. In October 2020, she spoke 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, as a key work.

In 2021, she was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. This award is sometimes called a "genius grant."

Research and Impact

Understanding the Internet's Influence

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

Her knowledge about algorithmic discrimination and technology bias is well-known. Many major news outlets have featured her work. These include Rolling Stone, The Guardian, BBC, CNN International, and The New York Times. She has also written about how big technology companies affect public resources.

Her research also explores how gender, technology, and culture shape the internet. Her writings have appeared in academic journals and popular magazines like Time. She has also helped edit books like Emotions, Technology & Design.

Algorithms of Oppression Book

Noble's first book, Algorithms of Oppression, came out in 2018. The New York Public Library named it one of the 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, can be created and spread by the internet. Noble looks at how companies like Google and Facebook use algorithms. These algorithms can be like "black boxes," meaning it's not clear how they get their results. Her work aims to change how technology treats people from marginalized groups. She has also given many talks and interviews about her book.

Select Publications

Edited Volumes

• Emotions, Technology & Design (co-edited)
• The Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Culture and Class Online (co-edited)

See also

In Spanish: Safiya Noble para niños