Our Team

About

Lee Rainie is a Senior Fellow at the Burnes Center for Social Change and the Director of the Imagining the Digital Future Center at Elon University.  Prior to joining as Director in 2023, he directed the Pew Research Center’s efforts to study the internet and technology for 24 years. 

While leader of Pew’s Internet and Technology Project, he and his team produced more than 850 reports about the social, political and economic impact of four newly emerging technology revolutions: the internet/broadband revolution, the mobile connectivity revolution, the social media revolution and the artificial intelligence revolution. His partnership with Elon University began in 2000, when – as Pew Internet director – he began at first funding and then co-leading and publishing a remarkable series of “future of the internet” reports with Elon researchers.

His project was described by the American Sociological Association’s Public Sociology Award citing his team’s work at Pew as the “most authoritative source of reliable data on the use and impact of the internet and mobile connectivity,” noting its “excellence in the reporting on social issues.” His research with Pew and that with Elon University is frequently reported by major media outlets nationally and globally. He is also a well-known speaker who has appeared annually as a keynoter in dozens of national and international venues.

Rainie is co-author (with Barry Wellman) of “Networked: The New Social Operating System”, and of a series of five books about the future of the internet co-authored by research partner Janna Anderson that were based on early Project canvassings of experts.

Prior to his long career at Pew, Rainie was managing editor of the newsweekly magazine U.S. News & World Report from 1987 to 1999, and he previously covered American politics for several publications, including the New York Daily News, where he worked from 1975 to 1987.