Research

Scholarly Research

My scholarly research looks at the uses of information and communication technologies (ICTs) for the public good (or commons). I seek to contribute to the current values-based or public-interest scholarship that recognizes the benefits of ICT for human development. I often frame this terrain as “issues of access and issues of control,” examining the tensions between technology as a force for positive change, empowerment, and emancipation, and technology as a force for enclosure, discrimination, and repression. Either called information/digital/new media studies, this academic focus is particularly interdisciplinary, appraising new developments that require adaptation and the modular application of various theoretical methods and approaches. General topics of concern include:

  • Global Internet Governance
  • Intellectual Property Rights, Creative Commons and Free Culture
  • Convergence Culture
  • Political Economy of Cultural and ICT Industries
  • Internet Law and Policy
  • Surveillance and Privacy
  • Online Advertising and Public Relations
  • Information and Communication Rights
  • Digital Media Ethics
  • Digital Media Aesthetics
  • Representational practices in New Media (race, class, gender, and sexuality)
  • Media and Information Literacies
  • Instructional Technology and Design
  • Virtual Environments
  • Social Media (SNS, wikis, blogs, micro-blogs)
  • Mobile Media and culture
  • Computer and Video Games

Ph.D. Dissertation

My PhD dissertation, Radical Culture in the Digital Age: A Study of Critical New Media Practice, examines the critical practices of various forms of online cultural activity, including indymedia, net.art, hactivism, p2p, and Free and Open Source software. These practices demonstrate ways that people and groups leverage offline/online strategies and tactics for civil disobedience, issue-based advocacy, and free and open information exchange. This work is being revised for publication, linking older and newer practices together, assessing future directions for politically engaged online culture formations.


Additional Research


Research projects that I am currently working on:

  • I have been looking at visual strategies of convergence in television and online ad campaigns that integrate web aesthetics and the visual semiotics of science and technology. I’m working on a short visual essay that identifies these strategies.
  • I am currently researching best practices for using social media in coalition building and multistakeholderism, to be presented at GIGANET in Egypt this November (2009).
  • I have been working on a comparative analysis of sustainable cultural practices related to commons-based open source development models. This work links principles of production and information exchange to various online endeavors including software development, remix culture, and open publishing and education.
  • I am also working on a Book Chapter on the ethics of Google’s privacy policies and practices, including its public relations and user education campaigns around user privacy rights in the cloud.