Sarah T. Roberts

In 2019, Roberts' book Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media was published by Yale University Press. It is the first book-length ethnographic study of the work commercial content moderators. The book received positive reviews by publications including the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Along with longtime collaborator Safiya Noble, Roberts is co-director of the Center for Critical Internet Inquiry (C2i2) at UCLA. In 2019, Roberts was awarded an NSF grant to further her research on CCM.

As part of her work, Roberts consulted on the 2018 documentary The Cleaners, which focused on content moderators and the challenges they face.

In 2016, Roberts became an assistant professor at University of California, Los Angeles's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. She was awarded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in 2020.

From 2013 to 2016, Roberts was an assistant professor at the University of Western Ontario's Faculty of Information & Media Studies.

In 1997, Roberts received a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she double-majored in French and Spanish language and literature. She also earned a certificate of Women's Studies. In 2007, Roberts received an M.A. in Library and Information Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison's iSchool. In 2014, Roberts earned a PhD in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Her dissertation, directed by Linda C. Smith, was titled Behind the Screen: The Hidden Digital Labor of Commercial Content Moderation.

Sarah T. Roberts (born September 2, 1975) is a professor, author, and scholar who specializes in content moderation of social media. She is an expert in the areas of internet culture, social media, digital labor, and the intersections of media and technology. She coined the term "commercial content moderation" (CCM) to describe the job paid content moderators do to regulate legal guidelines and standards. Roberts wrote the book Behind the Screen: Content Moderation in the Shadows of Social Media.