Taina Bucher is an associate professor in media studies at the Department of media and communication, University of Oslo. She studies the relationships and entanglements between algorithms, social and political concerns – examining how users experience and make sense of algorithmic power and politics. Her first book, IF…THEN: Algorithmic power and politics (Oxford University Press, 2018) details the ontological politics at stake in the algorithmic media landscape. Her current book, Facebook (Polity Press) rethinks what Facebook meansand the role the company plays in society today. The book suggests that Facebook is no longer simply a social networking site or social media platform. Rather, Facebook is Facebook.
From 2013-2019, she worked as an associate professor in communication and IT at the Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
She holds a PhD in media studies from the University of Oslo in the Department of Media and Communiaction, in 2012. The PhD dissertation entitled Programmed Sociality: A Software Studies Perspective on Social Networking Sites concerns the ways in which social media platforms have become central forces in the construction of sociality, developing an understand of how social networking software mediate and govern practices of everyday life. It was awarded the Association of Internet Researchers annual dissertaion award in 2013.
She is an editorial board member of three top-journals in the field of media and communication/digital media: New Media & Society; Information, Communication & Society; Social Media + Society. Her work is published in a variety of academic venues, including New Media & Society, Television & New Media, Information, Communication & Society, Computational Culture, Social Media + Society, Culture Machine, and Media, Culture & Society.
Previously, she has been a visiting scholar at The New School (2015), New York City, the Infoscape Research Lab (2011), Ryerson University, and at the Department of Media, Culture and Communication (2010), New York University.
She holds an MSc in Culture & Society from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a BA in Culture and Communication from the University of Oslo and Art History from Lund University.
On a personal note, Taina is a Swiss/Finnish citizen who grew up and has lived in eight different countries. Norway is her home. She always listens to music while writing, and earned her living as a student by working in record stores. She’s broken almost every bone in the left side of her body, but continues to enjoy cross-country skiing and life in general!