contact info

portrait of Andrés
  • email@andresmh.com

Andrés Monroy-Hernández

I am a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research and a Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Previously, I was a doctoral student at the MIT Media Lab.

My research examines the social, technical, and cultural dimensions of social computing systems. In particular, I focus on the design and study of online communities. I use quantitative and qualitative methodologies to understand the social dynamics and cultural artifacts that emerge from peer-production systems. I then apply those insights to the design of the underlying sociotechnical infrastructure and the policies that it embodies. My work on human-computer interaction is positioned at the frontier of computer science, social science, and digital humanities.

As part of my research, I created the Scratch Online Community. a large, international social media website where young people share, and remix their own video games, animations, and interactive art projects. The community has grown to almost 1,000,000 members, more than 2,000,000 contributed projects, and has been recognized at the Ars Electronica Prix, and the MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Competition.

More recently, I have studied deviant online behavior and organized crime on social media.

Beyond social technologies, I have a secondary research interest in creating technologies for use in the developing world. I co-founded Sana Mobile, a mobile healthcare system for patients in remote locations.

My research has been covered by Technology Review, ReadWriteWeb, NPR Mindshift, NPR Marketplace Tech, Wired, The New York Times, The Toronto Star, Milenio Semanal, and and El Comercio.

I have also written opinion articles about social media for CNN and The New York Times

You can follow me on , , or

Education

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2012

    PhD in Media Arts and Sciences

    Dissertation: Designing for Remixing — Supporting an Online Community of Amateur Creators

    Committee: Mitchel Resnick, Yochai Benkler, Rob Miller

    Examiners: Mitchel Resnick, Yochai Benkler, Tim Berners-Lee

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2007

    MS in Media Arts and Sciences

    Committee: Mitchel Resnick, Alex (Sandy) Pentland, Henry Jenkins

  • Tecnológico de Monterrey 2001

    BS in Computer Engineering

Interests

Social Computing, SocialMedia, Human-Computer Interaction, Youth & Media, Social Learning, Online Communities, Online Collaboration, Peer Production, Social System Design

Current Positions

  • Postdoctoral Researcher Microsoft Research

    Cambridge, MA 2011-Present

    Conducting research on social media at FUSE Labs and the Social Media Collective at the New England Research and Development Center.

    Mentors: Shelly Farnham, danah boyd

  • Berkman Fellow Harvard University

    Cambridge, MA 2011-Present

    Participating in multidisciplinary research on online cooperation research at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

Work Experience

  • Research Assistant MIT Media Lab

    Cambridge, MA 2005-2011

    Led a software development team, mentored students, and worked with corporate sponsors.

    Supervisor: Mitchel Resnick, Professor

  • Intern Microsoft Research

    Cambridge, MA Summer 2010

    Examined young people's attitudes toward the reuse of digital media.

    Supervisor: danah boyd, Sr. Researcher

  • Software Developer Ex Libris Group

    Newton, MA 2001-2005

    Developed several versions of SFX – a web service that links scholarly databases.

    Supervisor: Oren Beit-Arie, Chief Strategy Officer

  • Intern Los Alamos National Laboratory

    Los Alamos, NM Fall 2000

    Developed MyLibrary – a personalized web portal for library resources.

    Supervisor: Richard Luce, Research Library Director

  • Research Assistant Tecnológico de Monterrey

    Monterrey, México 1999-2000

    Implemented Z39.50 interoperability for a web-based digital repository.

    Supervisor: David Garza-Salazar, Professor

Additional Training

  • Oxford Internet Institute 2009

    Summer Doctoral Program, Brisbane, Australia

Highlighted Projects

  • Scratch Online Community 2007 - 2011

    Created and maintained the Scratch Online Community: a large web site where children create and share their own animations and video games. The web site receives 10 million page views per month, has close to 1 million registered members and 2 million user-submitted projects. http://scratch.mit.edu

    • MacArthur Digital Media & Learning Competition, Best in Class Award – 2010

    • Ars Electronica Prix, Honorable Mention, Digital Communities category – 2008

  • Sana Mobile 2008

    Co-founded Sana, a mobile application that connects healthcare professionals with people in remote locations in the developing world. Created as part of the NextLab initiative at MIT and piloted in Zambia. http://sanamobile.org

Skills

  • Research – Experience with qualitative and quantitative research.

  • Technical – Large-scale data-driven web architecture, LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl, Python), HTML/JavaScript, data manipulation & analysis (scripting, SQL, R).

  • Project Management – Hiring and managing technical teams.

  • Languages – Bilingual (English and Spanish).

Publications

  • , , , (2011). Computers can't give credit: How automatic attribution falls short in an online remixing community. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '11). Honorable mention.

  • , , , , , (2011). 4chan and /b/: An Analysis of Anonymity and Ephemerality in a Large Online Community. In Proceedings of the AAAI International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM '11). Best paper award.

  • , , (2011) Making Projects, Making Friends: Online Community as Catalyst for Interactive Media Creation. Journal of New Directions of Youth Development.

  • , (2011). Appropriation and Creativity: User-initiated Contests in Scratch. In Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS '11)

  • , , , (2011) Collaboration by Choice: Youth Online Creative Collabs in Scratch. In Proceedings of International Conference on Computers in Education (ICCE '11)

  • , , (2011). Tagging in a Community of Media Creators: Practices that make programs popular in Scratch Online. In Proceedings of the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting (AERA '11)

  • , and (2010). Book Chapter: Media Literacy in the Facebook Age: Designing Online and Face to Face Learning Environments. In Araya, Breindl, Houghton (Eds.), Nexus: Intersections of Internet Research. New York: Peter Lang.

  • and (2010). Cooperation and attribution in an online community of young creators (poster paper). In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW '10).

  • , , (2010). Responses to remixing on a social media sharing website. In Proceedings of the AAAI International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM '10).

  • , (2010) Remix Culture on the Web: A Survey of Content Reuse on Different User-Generated Content Websites (poster paper). In Proceedings of Web Science Conference (Web Sci '10).

  • (2009). Designing a website for creative learning (poster paper). In Proceedings of Web Science Conference (Web Sci '09).

  • , , , and (2009). A tale of two online communities: Fostering collaboration and creativity in scientists and children. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Creativity and Cognition (C&C '09).

  • , , , et al (2009). Scratch: Programming for All. Communications of the ACM, 52, 11, 60-67

  • , , and (2009). Scratch: Creating and sharing interactive media (workshop). In Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL '09).

  • , , and (2009). Children's participation patterns in online communities: An analysis of Israeli learners in the scratch online community. Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects, 5, 263-274.

  • and (2008). Empowering kids to create and share programmable media. ACM interactions. vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 50-53.

  • (2007). ScratchR: sharing user-generated programmable media. In Proceedings of ACM Interaction Design and Children (IDC '07).

  • , , , , and (2001) A personalization service for digital library environments. In Proceedings of the DELOS-NSF Workshop on Personalisation and Recommender Systems in Digital Libraries.

Opinion Articles

  • Monroy-Hernández, A., (2011). Mexico murders show how Internet empowers, threatens. CNN Op-Ed

  • Monroy-Hernández, A., (2011). Shouting Fire in a Crowded Hashtag: Narco Censorship & "Twitteroristas" in Mexico's Drug Wars. The New York Times

Presentations

  • Designing for Remixing: Computer-supported Social Creativity. Invited speaker. Microsoft Research. Redmond, WA. 2011.

  • Copyright and Freedom of Expression: The Social Impact of Communication Scholarship. Panelist at plenary session (with Steve Anderson, Francesca Coppa, Andrew Kenyon, and Jonathan Zittrain, and Patricia Aufderheide). Conference of the International Communication Association. Boston, MA 2011.

  • Kidgenuity: What We Can Learn from Kids Inventing Future Technology. Panelist (with Vanessa Van Petten, Steve Mushkin, and Audrey Watters). The ReadWriteWeb 2WAY Summit. New York, NY. 2011

  • The Politics of User-generated Content. Panelist (with Finn Brunton, JonathanMcIntsoh, and Mizuko Ito). Digital Media and Learning Conference. Long Beach, CA, 2011

  • Introduction to Social Computing. Invited speaker. Computer Science Department at The College of New Jersey. Ewing, NJ, 2010

  • Why You Sould Care about Social Computing. Invited speaker. Accelerate 2010: Discovering Web Innovation in Asia. Singapore, 2010

  • Copyrights and Copycats: Understanding Young People's Remixing Practices. Invited speaker. Microsoft Research New England. Cambridge, MA, 2010

  • Remixing and Online Communities. Invited speaker. Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyberscholars. Cambridge, MA, 2010

  • Reimagining Scratch, Reimagining Learning. Panelist (with Mitchel Resnick, Karen Brennan and Amon Millner), Scratch@MIT Conference. Cambridge, MA, 2010

  • Designing participatory spaces for young people. Panelist (with Michael Dezuanni, Kai Kuikamenei). Digital Media and Learning Conference. San Diego, 2010

  • Symposium on Cloud Intelligence. Invited speaker. Ars Electronica. Austria, 2009

  • Designing for Participation and Collaboration. Invited speaker. Computational Science and Engineering Seminars. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Berkeley, CA, 2009

  • Youth Online: Designing for Participation and Collaboration. Invited speaker. Harvard-MIT-Yale Cyberscholars. Cambridge, MA, 2009

  • Creativity and Media Literacy. Invited speaker. Digital Natives Forum. Berkman Center, Harvard. Cambridge, MA, 2008

  • Amateur Creativity. Invited speaker. Think Forward Event, Hallmark Cards, Inc. Kansas City, MO, 2008

  • Sharing Issues: Intellectual Property and Scratch. Panelist (with Judith Donath, Dan Pote, and Wendy Seltzer). Scratch@MIT Conference. Cambridge, MA, 2008

  • New Opportunities in Amateur Interactive Content. Invited speaker. Amateur Hour Conference. New York Law School. New York, NY, 2007

  • User-created Content: What are the Impacts? Invited speaker. Technology Foresight Forum on the Participative Web, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Strategies and Policies for the Future. Canada, 2007

  • Technology and Education. Invited speaker. Northeastern University, ACMChapter. Boston, MA 2007

  • Creativity, Learning and Technology. Invited speaker. Pontificia Universidad Católica. Perú, 2007

  • Informal Introduction to Computing. Panelist (with Amon Millner, and Tamara Stern). Informatics, Mathematics, and ICT: a "golden triangle". Boston, MA, 2007

  • Sharing User-generated Programmable Media. Invited speaker. Omar Dengo Foundation, Costa Rica, 2007.

  • Cell Phones as Tool for Children as Social Scientists. Presenter (with Lis Sylvan). Boston Learning Technology Conference, Boston, MA, 2005

Press

  • Mexico Turns to Social Media for Information and Survival. The New York Times. September, 2011.

  • Latest battlefield in Mexico's drug war: Social media. CNN. September, 2011.

  • In Mexico, Social Media Become a Battleground in the Drug War. The New York Times. September, 2011.

  • Does Google+'s "real names only" policy make sense? Marketplace. National Public Radio. August, 2011

  • Scratch: Teaching the Difference Between Creating and Remixing. MindShift - How we will learn. National Public Radio. August, 2011.

  • Heres What 5 Million Posts on 4chan Look Like. Gawker. July, 2011.

  • From the Mouths of Babes: The Future of Tech is Robots and Real World Integration. ReadWriteWeb. June, 2011.

  • Apple Rejects Kid-Friendly Programming App. Wired. April, 2010.

  • The iPad Falls Short as a Creation Tool Without Coding Apps. Wired. March, 2010.

  • Playing Their Own Way. Technology Review. Technology Review. August, 2007.

  • We Live in the Age of Creativity. (Spanish) El Comercio de Peru. June, 2007.

Honors

  • Harvard University, Berkman Fellowship, 2011-2012

  • Oxford Internet Institute, Scholarship, Summer Doctoral Program, 2009

  • Amazon.com Research Grant, 2009

  • Bradesco Fellowship, 2008

  • Samsung Fellowship, 2007

  • Telmex Fellowship, 2005, 2006

  • Excellence scholarship, Tecnológico de Monterrey, 1996

  • Finalist in the National Mathematical Olympiad, México, 1995

Mentoring

  • Rita Chen, Master of Engineering student, Computer Science, MIT (now at Google)– 2010

  • Jared Domínguez, undergraduate student, Computer Science, MIT– 2010

  • Jazmin González-Rivero, High School intern at Microsoft Research (now at Olin College)– 2010

  • Han Xu, Master of Engineering student, Computer Science, MIT – 2008

  • Chetan Supur, high school intern at MIT (now at UC Berkeley) – 2008

  • Ubong Ukoh's, undergraduate student, Computer Science, MIT – 2007

Service

Reviewer for the following conferences: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (CHI) in 2012, 2011, 2010, and 2008; ACM Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) in 2012, 2011; AAAI International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM) in 2011; and IEEE's Pervasive Computing Conference in 2008

Teaching

  • Teaching Assistant. NextLab I: Designing Mobile Technologies for the Next Billion Users (MAS.965/6.976/SP.716), MIT, 2008. With Jhonatan Rotberg, Lecturer.

  • Workshop Facilitator.

    • Designing for designers: Exploring ways in which online community settings support young people's participation as digital media creators. Digital Media and Learning Conference. Long Beach, CA, 2011.

    • Programming for middle-schoolers. DigiGirlz Event, Microsoft New England. Cambridge, MA, 2009

    • Scratch and robotics for educators. Bradesco Institute of Technology, Brazil, 2008

    • Scratch programming for facilitators of Telmex after-school centers. México, 2008.

    • Programming for the web with Scratch. Citizen School 11-week program for middle-schoolers. Cambridge, MA, 2007.

    • Interactive media programming and electronic creations, for coordinators of the Intel Computer Clubhouses. Costa Rica, 2007.

    • Systems Thinking with Flowblocks workshop for middle-schoolers. México, 2006

    • Integrating Art and Technology workshop for conference attendees. Highlands and Islands Enterprise. UK, 2006

    • PicoCrickets for educators. Centro de Cultura Digital. México, 2006