About
Fred Stutzman is a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, where he works with Dr. Alessandro Acquisti researching the economic, behavioral-economic, policy, and design implications of privacy in social media. In 2011, he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science, where he was advised by Dr. Gary Marchionini. His research improves the outcomes of social media use through the design of effective privacy technologies and policies. To accomplish this goal, he conducts mixed-methods research that explores the outcomes of social media use, and he designs and evaluates privacy systems and policies that produce positive outcomes. Fred holds a BA in Economics, and a graduate certificate in survey research (quantitative methodology) from the Odum Institute for Research in Social Sciences.
In addition to his privacy research, Fred is interested in designing software interventions for social and behavioral problems that can not be solved through engineering and computational power alone. One example is “Freedom” software, which increases productivity by locking users away from the internet. Freedom, and companion product “Anti-Social” (software that locks users away from social media) have proven popular, with coverage by major media outlets and over 300,000 downloads. Before graduate school, Fred worked in technical and management roles for Ibiblio.org, The Motley Fool, and Nortel Networks. Fred consults with industry firms, political campaigns, and grant-funded academic projects regarding the use of social media, research design, and statistical evaluation. Notable clients include the presidential campaigns of Wesley Clark, John Kerry and John Edwards. His work has been featured on NPR and in the New Yorker, Economist, New York Times Magazine, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Wired, Newsweek, Slate, Salon and InStyle Magazine.
