Deen Freelon

Deen Freelon is a Presidential Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication. A widely recognized expert on digital politics and computational social science, he has authored or coauthored over 60 book chapters, funded reports, and articles in journals such as Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Freelon was one of the first communication researchers to apply computational methods to social media data and has developed eight open-source research software packages. He has been awarded over $6 million in research funding from grantmakers including the Knight Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, and the US Institute for Peace. He was also a founding member of the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research and commentary have been featured in press outlets including the Washington Post, NPR, The Atlantic, Buzzfeed, Vox, USA Today, the BBC, PBS NewsHour, CBS News, NBC News, and many others. Freelon earned a B.A. with honors from Stanford University (2002), and his M.A. (2008) and Ph.D. (2012) from the University of Washington. Unlike many computational social scientists, he centers questions of identity and power in his work, paying particular attention to race, gender, and ideology.