Joseph Michael Reagle Jr. (born 1972) is an American

academic An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, f ...

and author focused on digital technology and culture, including

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read ref ...

, online comments, geek feminism, and life hacking. He is Associate Professor of

Communication Studies Communication studies or communication science is an academic discipline that deals with processes of human communication and behavior, patterns of communication in interpersonal relationships, social interactions and communication in diffe ...

Northeastern University Northeastern University (NU) is a private research university with its main campus in Boston. Established in 1898, the university offers undergraduate and graduate programs on its main campus as well as satellite campuses in Charlotte, North C ...

. He was an early member of the

World Wide Web Consortium The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 and led by Tim Berners-Lee, the consortium is made up of member organizations that maintain full-time staff working t ...

, based at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern t ...

, Reagle's "papers" page on the W3C website indicates that he had co-authored a paper there in 1996: An archived message from January 2004 indicates that Reagle had left the W3C by that date: and in 1998 and 2010 he was a fellow at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society is a research center at Harvard University that focuses on the study of cyberspace. Founded at Harvard Law School, the center traditionally focused on internet-related legal issues. On May 15, 2008, ...

Education

Reagle received an undergraduate degree in computer science and a minor in history from the

University of Maryland, Baltimore County The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is a public research university in Baltimore County, Maryland. It has a fall 2022 enrollment of 13,991 students, 61 undergraduate majors, over 92 graduate programs (38 master, 25 doctoral ...

. He then enrolled in the Technology Policy Program at the

and wrote a masters thesis on trust and cryptographic financial instruments. He returned to MIT as a research engineer, and also served as a fellow at the

Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society is a research center at Harvard University that focuses on the study of cyberspace. Founded at Harvard Law School, the center traditionally focused on internet-related legal issues. On May 15, 2008, ...

. He returned to schooling at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, ...

, where he taught, and earned a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper ''Piled Higher and Deeper'' (also known as ''PhD Comics''), is a newsp ...

in 2008 with a thesis about the history and collaborative culture of Wikipedia, supervised by

Helen Nissenbaum Helen Nissenbaum is professor of information science at Cornell Tech. She is best known for the concept of " contextual integrity" and her work on privacy, privacy law, trust, and security in the online world. Specifically, contextual integrit ...

Career and research

left, upright=0.7, Reagle in 2008 Reagle was a member of the

from 1996 to 2003. There he worked on issues such as intellectual property and privacy. In 2002, he was listed as one of ''

MIT Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...

TR35 The Innovators Under 35 is a peer-reviewed annual award and listicle published by ''MIT Technology Review'' magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35. at ''Technology Review'' with lists of winners at technologyreview.com ...

, a list of the world's top innovators under the age of 35. In 2010, he reconstructed the first ten thousand contributions to Wikipedia from a previously lost data dump as a simple website. In 2011, Reagle published a journal article with Lauren Rhue that examined

gender bias in Wikipedia Gender bias on Wikipedia, also known as the Wikipedia gender gap, refers to the fact that Wikipedia contributors are mostly male, that relatively few biographies on Wikipedia are about women, and that topics of interest to women are less well-cov ...

, using gendered pronouns to detect articles about women and comparing and contrasting their findings against female coverage in other encyclopedias. The article concluded "that Wikipedia provides better coverage and longer articles, that Wikipedia typically has more articles on women than Britannica in absolute terms, but Wikipedia articles on women are more likely to be missing than articles on men relative to Britannica". Reagle is a supporter of

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre o ...

and all of his books are available online.

Selected publications

Books

* * * Reviews of ''Hacking Life'': * * * * * * * See also: meta:Wikipedia@20

Articles

About Wikipedia

* * * *

About culture

* * * * * *

Policy and technical specifications

* * * * *

References

External links

Joseph M. Reagle Jr.
at

{{DEFAULTSORT:Reagle, Joseph Date of birth missing (living people) Living people World Wide Web Consortium American technology writers Northeastern University faculty Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni University of Maryland, Baltimore County alumni Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development alumni 1972 births