Lee Rainie

Lee Rainie is the Director of Elon University's Imagining the Digital Future Center, a research initiative focused on the potential future impact of the digital revolution and what may lie ahead. The Center was established in 2000 and renamed with an expanded research agenda in 2024. Its mission is to discover and broadly share a diverse range of opinions, ideas and original research about the likely evolution of digital change, informing important conversations and policy formation.

Before that, he was founding Director of Internet and Technology research at the Pew Research Center, a non-profit, non–partisan “fact tank” that studies the social impact of the internet. He founded the Project in 2000. It was described by the American Sociological Association as the “most authoritative source of reliable data on the use and impact of the internet and mobile connectivity” and the ASA awarded him and the Internet Project its award for “excellence in the reporting on social issues award.”

Under his leadership, the Project issued more than 850 reports based on its surveys and data-science research that examine people’s online activities and the internet’s role in their lives. All of its reports and datasets are available online for free at: http://www.pewinternet.org.

Lee is a co-author of "Networked: The new social operating system" with sociologist Barry Wellman about the social impact of the internet, mobile phones and social media. He is also co-author of five books about the future of the internet that are based on Project surveys about the subject.

Prior to launching the Pew Internet Project, Lee was managing editor of the weekly news magazine U.S. News & World Report.