Caitlin Petre

Caitlin Petre studies the social processes behind the digital datasets and algorithms that increasingly govern the contemporary world. Using qualitative research methods such as ethnographic observation and in-depth interviewing, she maps the complex relationships between algorithms, the social actors who create them, and the established experts who make use of them. Petre’s book, All the News That’s Fit to Click (published September 2021 by Princeton University Press), is a behind-the-scenes look at how performance analytics have transformed the work of journalism.

Petre’s scholarly work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Social Media & Society, the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, the International Journal of Communication, and Digital Journalism. She has been featured or quoted in popular publications such as the New York Times, the Guardian, the Washington Post, WIRED, and the Atlantic. Petre has received funding for her research from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. In 2025, she received the Warren I. Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching, a university-wide award that honors "outstanding service in stimulating and guiding the intellectual development of students at Rutgers University."

She is currently working on a mixed-method project that investigates how cultural workers—and the unions that represent them—conceptualize, strategize, and collectively bargain around generative AI. This research was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities until the grant was terminated by the Trump administration in April 2025.

Ph.D., Department of Sociology, New York University
M.A., Department of Sociology, New York University
B.A., Department of Philosophy, Wesleyan University

Digital Ethnography Working Group