Born in 1965, Dominique Cardon has been a sociologist, researcher, professor and Medialab director at Sciences Po since 2016. A member of the Orange Labs research centre from 1996 to 2016 and an associate professor at the University of Marne la Vallée Technical Laboratory, he defended his thesis "The expanded public space. Opinion, Criticism and Expressiveness in the Internet Age” (“L'espace public élargi. Opinion, critique et expressivité à l'ère d'internet”) in 2015.

A former member of the Centre for Social Movement Studies at the EHESS and a member of the editorial committee for the journal “Réseaux”, his work and research initially led him to focus on different forms of expression in traditional media. He then went on to study the uses of communication technologies such as collaborative tools, the relationships between cultural practices and social life and the changes in the ways we work brought about by the digital revolution.

Very aware of the technological upheavals of our time and the challenges they present, Dominique Cardon became a pioneer in his discipline by looking at the issue of digital technologies. Since the early 2000s, his research has focused on the various uses of the Internet, as he deciphers social media, blogging, the governance of Wikipedia, and the transformation of the public space and of interpersonal relations.

The author of numerous specialist publications, the sociologist also speaks to a wider audience through his works, such as What do Algorithms Dream of? Our Lives in the Time of Big Data (“A quoi rêvent les algorithmes : Nos vies à l'heure des big data")  where he analyses how web and big data algorithms work and their impact on our uses of digital technologies, our daily activities, political lives and socio-cultural practices.

In 2019, Dominique Cardon published Digital Culture (“Culture numérique”) at the Presses de Sciences-Po, which seeks to emphasise the importance for everyone of building a digital culture.

Relying on extensive documentation and a broad bibliography, Dominique Cardon retraces the history of the web and the creation of the Internet, describes its economic and sociocultural challenges and its ambiguities, and encourages us to reconsider our approach to and uses of social networks.