Britt Paris

Britt S. Paris is a critical informatics scholar studying the political economy of information infrastructure, as it relates to evidentiary standards and political action. Previously, she has published work on Internet infrastructure projects, artificial intelligence-generated information objects, digital labor, and civic data, analyzed through the lenses of science and technology studies, political economy, cultural studies, and social epistemology. Paris’ research, teaching, and service are interconnected and emphasize the following themes:

• Critically investigating contemporary discourse and practice around using data-driven technology to solve growing social, political, and environmental problems.
• Uncovering political, ethical, and aesthetic assumptions built into Internet infrastructure.
• Understanding the labor, economics, and systems of power that undergird today’s information and communication landscape. 
• Organizing alternatives to market-driven information systems design.

These streams of research focus on developing a broader understanding of the social, political, economic, and historical forces that have shaped our current information and communication environment to allow us to envision sociotechnical systems that might better support a future worth fighting for.

Featured Work:

• May, E., Paris, B., & Sargent, S. (February, 2026). Dis/Engaging the “Common Sense” of AI: Labor strategies around data driven technologies from the 2023 SAG-AFTRA contract. Big Data & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517261421466
• Paris, B., Cath, C., & Myers-West, S. (2023). Radical Infrastructure: Building Beyond the Failures of Past Imaginaries for Networked Communication. New Media + Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231152546
• Paris, B. and Pasquetto, I. (2023). “Hidden Virality and the Everyday Burden of Correcting WhatsApp,” eds. Sanfillipo, M. and Ocepek, M. Everyday Misinformation Governance. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK. https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/items/126256
• Paris, B., Carmien, K.*, and Marshall, M*. (May, 2022). “We Want to Do More, But…” New Jersey Public Library Approaches to Misinformation. Library and Information Science Research (LISR), 44(2). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2022.101157
• Paris, B., (December, 2021). Configuring Fakes: Digitized Bodies, the Politics of Evidence, and Agency. Social Media + Society 7(4) 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051211062919