Elif Buse Doyuran is a Research Fellow in Generative Authenticity at the QUT node of the ADM+S Centre. Her research revisits core sociological questions on knowledge, practice and social organisation, within the context of the contemporary high-tech industry. Her PhD explored why digital platforms nudge their users and how behavioural influence techniques gained traction among Silicon Valley app developers, challenging the assumption that the techniques’ success can be explained by their inherent effectiveness in altering behaviour.
She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Edinburgh and holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and Political Science. During her PhD, she was a research affiliate with the Data Civics Observatory at the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI), where she co-founded and led The Platform Social, an EFI research programme that promotes heterodox approaches to studying platform economies. She currently serves as the Reviews and Commentaries Editor at the Journal of Cultural Economy.
At ADM+S, she will focus on the politics of authenticity infrastructure, investigating an emergent sub-sector of the AI industry and a key intermediary in the platform economy in the making. Drawing on methodological and theoretical approaches from STS, sociology, and political economy, her research will identify the key actors, their shared stakes and understandings, and the broader dynamics shaping “authenticity tech”, exposing the downstream effects on various user communities.