Dr Niall Docherty
BA (Goldsmiths), MA (Goldsmiths), PhD (Nottingham)
School of Information, Journalism and Communication
Lecturer in Data, AI and Society
Full contact details
School of Information, Journalism and Communication
Room C224
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
- Profile
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My research and teaching examines the power relations generated through everyday engagements with technology and the politics of computational design. I am currently involved in projects that explore digital well-being, technological control, ethical computing, histories of the user, and non-standard epistemological approaches to interdisciplinary collaboration. Prior to joining the University of Sheffield in 2022, I completed a PhD at the Centre for Critical Theory, University of Nottingham, was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Microsoft Research within the Social Media Collective, and a Research Fellow within the Responsible Computing group at the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy. I publish in interdisciplinary venues such as ACM CHI, Information, Communication and Society, Social Media + Society, and Science as Culture, and present my work at conferences such as AoIR, 4S, EASST and ICA. My first book, Healthy Users: The Governance of Well-Being on Social Media, was published in 2025 by the University of California Press.
- Research interests
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My work spans across multiple fields, such as:
Cultural studies
Critical theory
Continental philosophy
STS
Critical algorithm studies
Critical HCI
Interdisciplinary theory
Responsible computing
I can supervise a wide range of interdisciplinary topics that could involve, for instance, mixed method studies of platforms and their use, qualitative digital research, sociotechnical theory, critiques of capitalism, and responsible computational design. Some possible topics include:
Sociotechnical systems, power, and discursive materiality
Truth and conflict in public spheres
Nudge, interfaces, and governance through habit
Neoliberalism and contemporary modes of digital responsibilization
Digital well-being
The politics of social media
The production of users and hegemonic forms of usership
Foucault, governmentality, subjectivation and digital media
- Publications
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Books
- Healthy Users: The Governance of Well-Being on Social Media. University of California Press.
Journal articles
- “Empathy Code”: The Dangers of Automating Empathy in Business. Business & Society.
- An anticipatory regime of multiplanetary life: on SpaceX, Martian colonisation and terrestrial ruin. Science as Culture. View this article in WRRO
- Health and toxicity in content moderation: the discursive work of justification. Information, Communication & Society, 27(7), 1441-1457. View this article in WRRO
- Digital self-control and the neoliberalization of social media well-being. International Journal of Communication, 15, 3827-3846. View this article in WRRO
- Facebook’s ideal user : healthy habits, social capital, and the politics of well-being online. Social Media + Society, 6(2).
Book chapters
- Social Media Well-Being, Springer Reference Sozialwissenschaften (pp. 1-7). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden
Conference proceedings
- Integrative objects in sociotechnical contexts: constructing digital well-being with generic epistemology. CHI '23: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp 655). Hamburg, Germany, 23 April 2023 - 23 April 2023. View this article in WRRO
- (Re)Politicizing digital well-being : beyond user engagements. CHI '22: Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp 1-13). New Orleans, LA, USA, 30 April 2022 - 5 May 2022.
- Healthy Users: The Governance of Well-Being on Social Media. University of California Press.
- Teaching activities
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IJC103 Digital Media and Society
IJC204 Data Ethics and Leadership
IJC414 Data and Society