Siva Vaidhyanathan
Department: Department of Media Studies
Colleges / Universities: University of Virginia
Contact
P.O. Box 400866, 115 Ruppel Drive
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4866
Email: sv2r@virginia.edu
Siva Vaidhyanathan is the Robertson Professor of Media Studies. He is also director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia, which hosts a Democracy Lab, produces several podcasts, and the Virginia Quarterly Review magazine.
Professor Vaidhyanathan is the author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2018). He also wrote Intellectual Property: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2017), and The Googlization of Everything And Why We Should Worry (University of California Press, 2011). Additional books he’s authored include: Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity (New York University Press, 2001) and The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System (Basic Books, 2004). He also co-edited (with Carolyn de la Pena) the collection, Rewiring the Nation: The Place of Technology in American Studies (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).
Professor Vaidhyanathan served on the board of the Digital Public Library of America. from 2012 through 2018. He has written for many periodicals, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Bloomberg View, IEEE Spectrum, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Slate.com, Columbia Journalism Review, The Washington Post, Esquire.com, and The Nation. He is a frequent contributor to public radio programs. And he has appeared on news programs on BBC, CNN, NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, and ABC. He is currently a regular columnist for The Guardian. In 2016, Professor Vaidhyanathan played a prominent role in the higher-education documentary, Starving the Beast. Additionally, he was portrayed as a character on stage at the Public Theater in New York City in a play called Privacy (also in 2016). Professor Vaidhyanathan has appeared in an episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to discuss early social network services; and he has appeared in several documentary films, including Terms and Conditions May Apply (2013), Inside the Mind of Google (2009), and Freedom of Expression (2007).
Degree
Ph.D. American Studies University of Texas, Austin