Jeremy Birnholtz

  • Associate Professor, Communication Studies, School of Communication
  • Professor, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (courtesy)
  • Director, Social Media Lab @ Northwestern

Jeremy Birnholtz is an associate professor in the Communication Studies and the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (by courtesy) Departments at Northwestern University, where he also directs the Social Media Lab and leads the new undergraduate Digital Media Module. He is affiliated with the Media, Technology and Society and the Technology and Social Behavior graduate programs.

Professor Birnholtz’s research focuses on human-computer interaction issues, such as attention, information sharing, and collaboration through the use of technology. He has lectured and published widely on subjects that include young people’s attention to instant messaging, interruptions in attention in seniors with chronic pain, and deception in text messaging.

Jeremy’s interests and teaching center around how people coordinate, collaborate, and interact online, with a particular focus on attention. His seeks to better understand and support how people pay attention to their friends and colleagues online, and how they explain when they are unavailable to do so. His work has been generously supported by the National Science Foundation, Google Inc., and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and has been published at the ACM CHI and CSCW conferences and in various journals related to Human-Computer Interaction and Communication.