Hi! I’m Camille Butera (she/her), a researcher, writer, and artist interested in the ethics and social impact of technology on our daily lives. I'm an incoming Information Science doctoral student at the University of Colorado at Boulder. My research interests are focused on identity and technology, as well as the haunting of infrastructures. The heart of my interests is located in conceptualizing how the architecture and design of technology shapes our relationship to ourselves and others, and what it means to have past iterations of identity crystalized by these technologies.
Before this, I studied Sociology at Smith College, and did an MSc in the Social Science of the Internet at the Oxford Internet Institute. My work at both institutions related to confession and the disclosure of identity in digital spaces, with a strong focus on the impact of digital design and affordances.Outside of my personal research, I write about digital culture and games, with my writing featured in outlets like WIRED and The Verge. I also believe in the importance of maintaining a connection to art and play: I do digital and traditional illustration, love to work on theater productions, and maintain a hefty array of fiber art projects in my personal time.
If you're interested in any of these topics, feel free to reach out at camille.butera@colorado.edu or camille@butera.org!
"Before You Follow": Digital About Pages and Identity Formation on the Twitter subculture of #danmeitwt. Oxford University MSc Thesis. August 2022.
Martin, C. C., & Butera, C. (2022). Can Brief Interventions Improve Functioning in Engineering Student Dyads?. Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis, 19(1), 14.
“You’re Exactly What I’d Expect from the Confesh”: Identity and Catharsis in a Digital Space of Localized Anonymity. Smith College Honors Thesis. May 2021.
Butera, C. (2019) “'The Dismal Fantasy of the Cold Vacuity': Lovecraft, Lewis, and Science Fiction as a Means of Processing the Great War." The New York Review of Science Fiction.
Butera, C. (2019) "The Failure of the Zhenotdel: The Bolshevik Government and the Lack of Equity Provided to Russian Women between 1917 and 1930." The Birch: The Columbia University Undergraduate Journal of Slavic, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies.
“Parasocial Relationships in Actual Play Podcasts”, Atlanta GA. Comics and Popular Arts Conference. September 2019.
"'Don’t you ever do anything but cook and read?': Gender and domestic labor in the contemporary children’s fantasy novel," San Diego, CA. Mythopoeic Conference. August 2019.
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“A Haunted Discord Server Is the Last Good Place Online.” WIRED. April 2024.
Intern Writer. Today in Tabs. May 2023.
“Citizen Sleeper: Communities of Food.” Uppercut Crit. Feb 2023.
“Dead Accounts.” The String. August 2022.
