Joseph B. Walther

Visiting Scholar 2023-2024 at the Institute for Rebooting Social Media at Harvard University, Bertelsen Presidential Chair of Technology and Society and Distinguished Professor of Communication at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Joseph B. Walther is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, as well as Distinguished Professor in Communication and the Bertelsen Presidential Professor of Technology and Society at UCSB. His teaching and research focus on computer-mediated communication and social media in personal relationships, groups, educational settings, and inter-ethnic conflict, topics on which he has contributed several original theories and numerous experiments and surveys.

Prior to joining UCSB, Prof Walther was the Wee Kim Wee Professor in Communication Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; and previously at Michigan State University, Cornell, RPI, and Northwestern. He is a Fellow at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR), where he was a Fulbright Scholar. He’s also a Fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA) and a Distinguished Scholar in the National Communication Association (NCA). He’s received the NCA’s Woolbert Award for articles that have stood the test of time and changed thinking in the communication discipline for more than ten years, and the ICA’s Chaffee Award for career productivity and influence.