Philip N. Howard

Philip N. Howard is a sociologist and communication researcher who studies the impact of information technologies on democracy and social inequality.^[1] He is a faculty member of the Department of Communication, the Jackson School for International Studies, and the Information School at the University of Washington. He took up the professorship in Internet Studies at the University of Oxford's Oxford Internet Institute on 1 July 2016.^[2]

Biography

Philip N. Howard was born in Montreal in 1970. He is married to Gina Neff, also a professor at the University of Washington, and has two young sons.

Howard has been a Fellow at the Pew Internet & American Life Project in Washington D.C., the London School of Economics' Stanhope Centre for Communications Policy Research, Stanford University's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy. In 2013 he moved to Budapest, Hungary where he helped to found a new School of Public Policy at Central European University.

His research has demonstrated that the diffusion of digital media has long-term, often positive, implications for democratic institutions. Through information infrastructure, some young democracies have become more entrenched and durable; some authoritarian regimes have made significant transitions towards democratic institutions and practices; and others have become less authoritarian and hybrid where information technologies support the work of particular actors such as state, political parties, journalists, or civil society groups.

Howard was one of the first to investigate the impact of digital media on political campaigning in advanced democracies. New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen (2005) is about how politicians and lobbyists in the United States use the internet to manipulate the public and violate privacy.^[3] He is the author of The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (2010) which argues that how states respond to new information technologies has become a defining feature of both democracy and authoritarianism. Howard demonstrated that the internet was having an important impact on political Islam. The book was published before the Arab Spring, and shows how new social movements in North Africa and the Middle East were using social media to outmaneuver some of the region’s dictators, partly because these regimes lacked effective responses to online evidence of their abuses.^[4]

Democracy's Fourth Wave? (2013), with Muzammil M. Hussain, suggests that turning off the Internet, as the Mubarak regime did on January 28, 2011, actually strengthened the revolution by forcing people into the streets to seek information.^[5] It sees events like the Arab Spring as "early signs of the next big wave of democratization. But this time, it will be wrestled into life in the digital living room of the global community." ^[6] His research and commentary is regularly featured in the media, including recent contributions about media politics in the US, Hungary and around the world the New York Times and Washington Post.^[7][8][9]

In Pax Technica (2015) he argues that the Internet of Things will be the most important tool of political communication we have ever built. He advocates for more public input in its design and more civic engagement with how this information infrastructure gets used.^[10]

Education

Ph.D. Sociology, Northwestern University, 2002
M.Sc. Economics, London School of Economics, 1994
B.A. Political Science, Innis College, University of Toronto, 1993

Awards and Honors

• 2011-2013, Fellow, Center for Technology Policy, Princeton University
• Best Book Award, Information Technology and Politics Section, American Political Science Association, 2011
• 2008-9, Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University
• Outstanding Book Award 2008, International Communication Association
• Best Book Award 2006, Communication Technology & Society Section, American Sociological Association

Books

• Howard, Philip N. Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up. Yale University Press, 2015. Also published in German and Chinese.
• Howard, Philip N. (Editor). State Power 2.0: Authoritarian Entrenchment and Civic Engagement Worldwide. Ashgate Press, 2013.
• Howard, Philip N., (Coauthor). Democracy's Fourth Wave? Digital Media and the Arab Spring. Oxford University Press, 2013.
• Howard, Philip N. Castells on the Media. Polity Press, 2011.
• Howard, Philip N. The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam. Oxford University Press, 2011.
• Howard, Philip N. (Editor). Handbook of Internet Politics. Routledge, 2009.
• Howard, Philip N. New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen. Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• Howard, Philip N. (Editor). Society Online: The Internet in Context. Sage, 2004. Also published in Spanish.

Essays and Journalism

• "Hungary's Crackdown on the Press," New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/opinion/hungarys-crackdown-on-the-press.html?_r=0
• "Let’s Make Candidates Pledge Not to Use Bots," Reuters, http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/01/02/lets-make-candidates-pledge-not-to-use-bots/
• "Politics won’t know what hit it: The Internet of Things is poised to change democracy itself," Politico, http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2015/06/philip-howard-on-iot-transformation-000099
• "Bots Unite to Automate the Presidential Election", Wired Magazine, https://www.wired.com/2016/05/twitterbots-2/

External links

• Oxford University faculty page for Philip N. Howard
• Author home page for Philip N. Howard

References