I’m an Associate Professor in Visual Communication at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland College Park. My research contributes to discussions about technology platforms, social movements, and environmental justice occurring across fields of research.
In one strand of my research, I critically examine how technology platforms have reshaped peoples’ understanding of truth, labor, and more recently citizenship and democracy. Specifically, I describe how platforms’ exigencies for information and capital result in frictionless technologies that speed up life, flatten meaning and cultivate compulsive engagement in ways that are harmful to democracy. However, as my collaborators and I have found, frictions emerge such as labor resistance that seek to reclaim power and agency. The latest publication from this research is a co-edited (with Pawel Popiel) special issue of Information, Communication and Society titled “Platforms, Power and Friction,” that further develops the construct of friction beyond our respective studies of frictionless design and policy. We are currently developing the special issue into an edited book project.
In another strand of my work, I employ filmmaking and collaborative ethnography to study with members of social movements in search of labor, environmental and racial justice. Currently, I am co-directing (with Chloe Ahmann) a feature-length documentary film called Signs of Life, that examines the community-led efforts to build an equitable, sustainable future by residents of South Baltimore, a heavily industrial part of the city where residents live amongst polluting industries. This project like my previous work has yielded several media collaborations with residents as a way to support their citizen journalism efforts. My last film, One Driver, One Mic, that chronicled the creation of a driver-owned taxi cooperative in Austin, Texas was screened at the 2023 Big Sky Documentary Film Festival and is currently in distribution through Collective Eye Films.
In addition to producing scholarship and films, I am a tinkerer who likes to implement and envision technologies. Notably I co-created a journalism investigation called “Code Red: Baltimore’s Climate Divide,” in partnership with NPR and Wide Angle Youth Media and developed an ethnographic methodology with student journalists to build and deploy temperature monitors in the homes of people experiencing the heat island effect.
My research informs my teaching at the Merrill College. I am a co-lead of our new master’s documentary concentration and teach both a visual theory and research methods course to filmmakers. Additionally, I teach a doctoral seminar called “Social Movements, Peoples’ Media and Platform Power,” that examines the intersections of technology, citizenship and media practice.