Patricia G. Lange

Patricia G. Lange is an award-winning anthropologist studying digital media. She is Associate Professor and Chair of Critical Studies (undergraduate program) and Associate Professor of Visual & Critical Studies (graduate program) at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco. The National Communication Association selected her to receive the Franklyn S. Haiman Award (2020) for Distinguished Scholarship in Freedom of Expression for her book Thanks for Watching: An Anthropological Study of Video Sharing on YouTube (University Press of Colorado, 2019). The book draws on a multi-year, deeply engaged ethnographic project on YouTube to understand how video sharing supports sociality. Recognized as an expert in studies of new media and YouTube, her work focuses on technical identity performance and use of video to creatively express the self.

She is also the author of Kids on YouTube: Technical Identities and Digital Literacies (Routledge, 2014), which explores how video is used in informal learning environments. She also produced and directed an ethnographic film entitled, Hey Watch This! Sharing the Self Through Media (2020, https://vimeo.com/394007182), which provides a unique diachronic look at the rise and fall of YouTube as a social media site among a group of socially-motivated YouTubers. The film explores philosophical questions about contemporary use of media and offers a poignant view of self-expression in our ever-expanding mediated world.

As a pioneering scholar on YouTube, she has authored numerous articles and co-authored two books: Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media (MIT Press, 2010), and Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project (MIT Press, 2009). At CCA, she teaches courses in anthropology of technology; digital cultures; new media and civic engagement; space, place and time; and ethnography for design. Prior to joining CCA, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Listen in on the podcast in which Henry Jenkins and Colin Maclay discuss prospects for online communities with Howard Rheingold and Patricia G. Lange. See: https://www.howdoyoulikeitsofar.org/episode-56-howard-rheingold-and-patricia-lange/

More information may be found on her websites: https://portal.cca.edu/people/plange and patriciaglange.org.