Eszter Hargittai

Associate Professor of Communication Studies
and (by courtesy) Sociology
Faculty Associate, Institute for Policy Research
Northwestern University
Ph.D., Sociology, Princeton University, 2003
Curriculum Vitae

Eszter Hargittai received her Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University in 2003 and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University, before coming to Northwestern. Her research focuses on the social and policy implications of information technologies. Hargittai's most recent project explored differences in people's ability to use the Web effectively and efficiently. Based on in-person observations and interviews with one hundred randomly-selected Internet users in her county, she looked at differences in people's Web-use skills. She also examined how particular forms of content organization online influences what information is most accessible to users on the Web.

Previously, Hargittai has studied the unequal international spread of the Internet. Her work in this area has been quoted in the popular press (Wall Street Journal, Wired) and referenced in a Senate hearing. She has also written on how the use of social network methods may aid in the empirical study of globalization. At Princeton, she was a Woodrow Wilson Scholar. Her work has received support from the Markle Foundation, Dan David Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and Pew Internet and American Life Project. Hargittai is a visiting research collaborator at Princeton's Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies, associate director of the International Networks Archive at Princeton, and an affiliate of the National Center for Digital Government at Harvard University. She holds a B.A. in sociology from Smith College.

Current Projects

Inequalities in Accessing Information Online. Continuing her previous research, Hargittai is finishing a manuscript on differences in people's Web-use skills and online content organization. Previous research has found that different segments of the population use the Internet at varying levels. Although it is important to establish basic-use statistics, an important related question is to see whether those who are online are able to make use of and benefit from the Internet to similar degrees. Hargittai investigates to what extent people's Web-use skills vary and what explains these differences in online abilities. In this project, she is also exploring the independent effect that various types of content organization may have on what information people are most likely to access on the Web.

Gender Differences in Actual and Perceived Skills. The literature on gender and technology use finds that women and men differ significantly in their attitudes toward their technological abilities. Concurrently, existing work on science and math abilities of students suggests that such perceived differences do not always translate into actual disparities. There has been little work exploring gender differences with respect to Internet use ability. Hargittai, in collaboration with Steven Shafer of Princeton University, is using new data on Web-use skill to test empirically whether there are differences in men's and women's actual and perceived abilities to navigate online content. In the future, she also wishes to explore this question with respect to other types of skills.

In 2006/07 she is a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto, California.