Sarah T. Roberts

Sarah T. Roberts is a Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, affiliated with the departments of Gender Studies, Information Studies, and Labor Studies. She co-founded the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2), co-directs the Minderoo Initiative on Technology & Power, and is a research associate at the Oxford Internet Institute.

• Full Professor at UCLA
• Co-founder, UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2)
• Co-Director, Minderoo Initiative on Technology & Power
• Research Associate, Oxford Internet Institute

Her research centers on the intersection of media, technology, and society, with a focus on Internet and social media policy, infrastructure, and the emotional toll on content moderators. She is a leading authority on commercial content moderation, examining how power dynamics, geopolitics, and economics exacerbate global inequities through digital systems.

Her work spans ethnographic studies like the award-winning book Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media (Yale University Press, 2019) to analyses of AI's role in content moderation, platform governance, and digital labor ethics. She has contributed to outlets including Harvard Business Review, Flow Journal, and First Monday.

Scientific Awards:

• 2023: 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics
• 2020: International Scientific Honor Society
• 2019: Emmy Nomination for The Cleaners documentary
• 2018: Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Barlow Pioneer Award
• 2018: Carnegie Fellow

Roberts has also secured a $1.5 million NSF grant to study decision-making in content moderation, alongside colleagues Donghee Yvette Wohn and Libby Hemphill. Her publications and commentary frequently address the hidden labor systems behind AI, ethical implications of content governance, and the societal impact of platform policies.