I’m an associate professor in the Department of Communication and Richard E. Guggenhime Faculty Scholar at Stanford University.

I study algorithms in practice, focusing on how people use and make sense of algorithms and analytics in their work. Using ethnographic methods, I’ve examined this question across a range of sites, including web journalism, criminal justice, AI ethics, and social media creation.

My award-winning book, Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms (Princeton University Press, 2020) focused on the case of journalism, analyzing the effects of audience data in web newsrooms in the U.S. and France. It shows how American and French journalists made sense of traffic numbers in different ways, which had distinct effects on news production in the two countries.

In a second project, I analyzed the reception of predictive algorithms in the U.S. criminal justice system, building on my previous work on the determinants of criminal sentencing in French courts.

I also study the case of AI ethics, examining the structural contradictions shaping the work and careers of “ethics entrepreneurs” working in technology companies.

My current book project, Follow Me: Influencers, Platforms, and the Rise of the Follower Economy, is an ethnographic study of content creators on social media platforms. Drawing on case studies ranging from drama channels to vegan YouTubers and “dad” influencers and influencer marketers, it shows how structural forces reproduce precarity and inequality in social media careers, while also nudging influencers toward interpersonal drama and sometimes the production of problematic content. I discussed it in the Ethnography Atelier podcast.

I received my PhD in Sociology from Princeton University and the EHESS (Paris).  I’m a co-editor of the Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology at Princeton University Press.

Last but not least: if you wonder how to pronounce my first name (many people do), the Belgian singer Angèle does it really well here.

Selected publications:

“Walking the Walk of AI Ethics: Organizational Challenges and the Individualization of Risk among Ethics Entrepreneurs.” 2023 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT ’23), June 12–15, 2023, Chicago, IL, USA (with S. Ali, A. Smart, and R. Katila)

“The Influencer Pay Gap: Platform Labor Meets Racial Capitalism.” New Media & Society: 1-24 (with Y. Lu)

“Platform Drama: ‘Cancel Culture,’ Celebrity, and the Struggle for Accountability on YouTube.” New Media & Society 24(7): 1632-1656 (with R. Lewis)

“The Drama of Metrics: Status, Spectacle, and Resistance Among YouTube Drama Creators.” Social Media + Society: 1:14 (with R. Lewis)

“Algorithmic Ethnography, During and After COVID-19.” Communication and the Public. Online First: 1-4.

“Making Peace with Metrics: Relational Work in Online News Production.” Sociologica 14(2): 133-156 (with C. Petre)

“The Ethnographer and the Algorithm: Beyond the Black Box.” Theory & Society. Online First, 1-22.

“Technologies of Crime Prediction: The Reception of Algorithms in Policing and Criminal Courts,” Social Problems Online First 1-17 (with S. Brayne)

“What Data Can Do: A Typology of Mechanisms,”  International Journal of Communication 14 (2020): 1115-1134.

“Algorithms at Work: The New Contested Terrain of Control” Academy of Management Annals 14(1): 366-410. (with K. Kellogg and M. Valentine)

“Counting Clicks: Quantification and Variation in Web Journalism in the United States and France.” American Journal of Sociology 123 (5): 1382-1415.

“Algorithms in Practice: Comparing Web Journalism and Criminal Justice.” Big Data & Society 4 (2): 1-14.