I am an assistant professor of media studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
My research examines how digital infrastructures reshape and perpetuate durable inequalities. I am currently writing a book, Smart as a City, based on fieldwork and interviews I conducted over three years in Kansas City, where residents and public officials have partnered with Google and Cisco to test a gigabit internet service and a smart city program, respectively. I examine in what ways digital infrastructures change how the city manages and experiences urban inequalities.
I also study technologies of statecraft in various contexts from tech nationalism to smart borders to the use of automated decision systems in public agencies. My work has been published in Big Data & Society, Convergence, New Media & Society, and the Journal of Political Power. I am the co-editor (with Victoria de Grazia) of Soft-Power Internationalism: Competing for Cultural Influence in the 21st Century Global Order (Columbia University Press, 2021).
I received the Charles Benton Early Career Scholar Award from the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society and TPRC in 2019 and the James Carey Urban Communication Award in 2021. I was a visiting fellow at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (2022), the Academy of International Affairs NRW (2023), the Weizenbaum Institut (2024) in Germany, and a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University (2020-2023).
I completed a Ph.D. at Columbia University. I hold an MA in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University, an MA in Political Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a BA in Political Science and International Relations from Bogazici University.
[Baykurt CV] (PDF, June 2024)