2025-2027 EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
President: Sarah T. Roberts
Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D. is an associate professor at UCLA (Gender Studies, Information Studies, Labor Studies), specializing in Internet and social media policy, infrastructure, politics and culture, and the intersection of media, technology and society. She is the faculty director and co-founder of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2), co-director of the Minderoo Initiative on Technology & Power, and a research associate of the Oxford Internet Institute. Informed by feminist Science and Technology Studies perspectives, Roberts is keenly interested in the way power, geopolitics and economics play out on and via the internet, reproducing, reifying and exacerbating global inequities and social injustice. Roberts researches information work and workers, and is a leading global authority on “commercial content moderation,” the term she coined to describe the work of those responsible for making sure media content posted to major commercial social platforms t within legal, ethical, and the site’s own guidelines and standards. She is frequently consulted on matters of policy, worker welfare, and governance related to content moderation issues and the broader social media landscape.
Vice President: Andra Siibak
Andra Siibak is a Professor of Media Studies, a Deputy Head of Research and a Program Director of the Doctoral Curriculum in Media and Communication at the Institute of Social Studies, University of Tartu. Her research focuses on digital childhoods, the use of AI-based systems in family life and education, and issues of privacy. Together with Giovanna Mascheroni she has co-authored “Datafied Childhoods: Data Practices and Imaginaries in Children’s Lives” (Peter Lang, 2021), and “Children and AI: Changing Digital Childhoods?” (Palgrave, forthcoming). Andra is a member of the Academy of Europe and serves as the Governing Body member of European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA).
Treasurer: Robert W. Gehl
Robert W. Gehl is a Fulbright scholar and award-winning author whose research focuses on contemporary communication technologies. He is the Ontario Research Chair of Digital Governance for Social Justice at York University in Toronto, Canada. His books include _Move Slowly and Build Bridges_ (Oxford, 2025) and _Social Engineering_ (MIT, 2022, co authored with Sean Lawson). He has published about 30 articles in academic journals such as New Media & Society, Fibreculture, Social Media + Society, and Information, Communication, and Society.
Secretary: Nathalie Schäfer
Nathalie Schäfer is a PhD candidate in the research training group Media Anthropology at the Faculty of Media at Bauhaus-University Weimar, with expertise in the practice of “botting” with fame-enhancing bots on Instagram. Her research focuses on bots, cultural techniques and practices, the intersection and entanglement of human and automated (bot) cultures, social media and platform governance, as well as methodologies for researching digital media. Nathalie holds a B.A. in Art, Music, and Media from Philipps-University Marburg and the Université de Poitiers (2017), as well as an M.A. in Media Studies and a Master’s degree in Cinéma et Audiovisuel from the Université Lumière Lyon II, the Bauhaus University Weimar, and the Universiteit Utrecht (2019). She is co-editor of Szenen kritischer Relationalität (meson press 2024, with Bolwin et al.). Her web presence can be found at https://nathalieschaefer.de, and she is @nathalie@social.aoir on Mastodon.
Graduate Student Representative: Lynrose Jane Genon
Lynrose Jane Genon is currently a PhD candidate at the Digital Media Research Center of Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. She is also a faculty member (on study leave) at the Department of English of Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT) in Mindanao, Philippines. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Master of Arts in Culture and Arts Studies. Her research interests include youth, gender, peace, and digital media and communication. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynrosejanegenon/
Open Seat: Admire Mare
Professor Admire Mare specialises in the complex and unpredictable intersections between [media] technology and society with a special attention on global digital journalism studies, digital disinformation studies, digital diplomacy studies, digital surveillance studies and digital platform studies. With an interdisciplinary training in sociology, social anthropology, international relations and journalism and media studies, Prof Mare has taught at various universities in Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. He has assumed various leadership positions at all the universities he has taught including serving as the Deputy Head and Head of Department. He has served as the International Engagement Editor for Digital Journalism, Africa Editor for Policy & Internet as well as the Discipline Editor for the UJ Press. Between 2023 and 2024, he was a visiting professor at the University of Technology, Mauritius and a visiting fellow at the prestigious The University of Sydney, Australia. In 2023, he was appointed as UJ’s Head of Department: Communication and Media Studies for a three-year tenure. He is full Professor of Communication and Media Studies. He has received numerous accolades over the years, the most recent being Rhodes University’s Alumni JMS50 Award in 2022. He’s a regular keynote speaker and contributor to local, regional and international conferences. He has several research grants including the recent “Mapping and Countering Gendered Disinformation Campaigns in East and Southern Africa” project (2025-2027) funded by IDRC Canada. To date, he has authored/edited 11 books, over 40 book chapters and over 40 journal articles. Some of his recent books include: “Digital Surveillance in Africa: Power, Agency and Rights” (co-edited with Tony Roberts), Digital Technologies, Elections and Campaigns in Africa (co-edited with Duncan Omanga and Pamela Mainye), Digital Surveillance in Southern Africa: Policies, Politics and Practices (co-authored with Allen Munoriyarwa), Global Pandemics in the Media: An African Perspective (co-edited with Nkosinothando Mpofu, Phillip Santos, and Hugh Ellis-Mwiya), Disinformation Campaigns in Africa: Actors, Consequences and Responses (co-authored with Allen Munoriyarwa) and African Digital Cultures: Platforms, Performances and Perspectives (co-edited with Oswelled Ureke).
Open Seat: Rebecca Scharlach
Dr. Rebecca Scharlach is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Platform Governance, Media & Technology Lab at the Centre for Media, Information and Communication Research (ZeMKI), University of Bremen. She is the PI of the research project “Values-based Governance”. Her current research focuses on how tech companies navigate and shape the regulation of AI, and how tech ideologies construct socio-technical and socio-political futures. She has published articles in academic journals such as New Media & Society, Social Media + Society, JCMC and the Journal of Communication. Rebecca is @rscarlets.bsky.social on Bluesky, @rscarlets.aoir.social on Mastodon, and her web presence is: https://www.rebeccascharlach.com/
Open Seat: Meg Jing Zeng
Dr. Meg Jing Zeng is an Assistant Professor of Computational Communication and Social Science at the University of Zurich. Her research explores the socio-political implications of digital communication technologies, with a focus on AI, short-video platforms, conspiracy theories, and misinformation. She has an extensive body of work in internet research, including books such as TikTok (Polity, 2022, with D.B.V. Kaye and P. Wikström), Information, Technology and Society: Global Perspectives on the Digital Transformation (Brill, 2025, with D. Nguyen and B. Mutsvairo), Transnational and Transcultural Internet Celebrities: Diaspora Wanghong in China (Routledge, forthcoming 2025, with C. Abidin and F. Wu), and Alt Platforms (Polity, forthcoming 2027). Together with Suay Oezkula, she co-founded ViMe (https://journal-vime.org/) in 2025, an open-access, peer-reviewed platform for publishing visual research methods.
