I am Professor of Political Communication in the Department of Communication and Media at Loughborough University, where I am also Director of the Online Civic Culture Centre (O3C).

I explore how the internet and digital media are implicated in social and political power in four broad areas: political mobilisation, political engagement, deception and dis/misinformation, and news and journalism. I invented the concepts of the “hybrid media system,” “hybrid media events,” “organizational hybridity," and the “ontology of hybridity” and introduced them into social science research, where they have become influential in a wide range of fields including political communication, journalism studies, social movement studies, social media analysis, public opinion research, algorithm studies, party and election campaign research, communication theory, social theory, dis-/misinformation research, media audience/reception studies, and analyses of populism.

My work takes a broadly interdisciplinary, sociotechnical, and social scientific approach inspired by some key concepts and methods from communication, political science, sociology, psychology, and science and technology studies. When, at the turn of the century, I began researching digital media, politics and society, mainstream social science disciplines were initially slow to adapt to the rapidly changing information and communication landscape. I took early inspiration from science and technology studies and its influence on my work has continued.

I’m increasingly interested in how, in recent years, social and technological forces have converged in ways that produce norms of distrust, enmity, and vulnerability in key areas of life, particularly public health and environmental sustainability, and in how a deeper, relational understanding of people’s everyday norms in relation to digital media technologies should inform the important ethical and regulatory questions we face in the near future.

My books and journal articles have won multiple international awards from the American Sociological Association, the International Communication Association, and the American Political Science Association. In addition, The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power (Oxford University Press, 2013; Second Edition, 2017) won the International Journal of Press/Politics Best Book Award (2016), which recognises an outstanding book published in the previous ten years.

Among other projects, I am currently working on my next book (working title Social Media and the Future of Democracy), which will be published by Oxford University Press. Since 2016 I have mostly been writing about online disinformation, misinformation, deception, and other online harms. This has involved establishing a new research centre and doctoral programme at Loughborough University, the Online Civic Culture Centre (O3C), for which I gained funding and founded in February 2018, and the Everyday Misinformation Project, which focuses on the everyday sharing of misinformation on personal messaging platforms and is funded by a large grant from the Leverhulme Trust. From 2020 to 2023 I was a prominent researcher in the multidisciplinary Oxford Coronavirus Explanations, Attitudes, and Narratives Project on misinformation and Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy, to which I brought expertise in online social endorsement. This resulted in an award-winning journal study I led that informed part of the UK government’s response to vaccine disinformation during the Covid vaccine rollout.

My earlier books include Internet Politics: States, Citizens, and New Communication Technologies (Oxford University Press, 2006), which was awarded the American Sociological Association Best Book Award (Communication and Information Technologies Section); The Handbook of Internet Politics (Routledge, 2009; co-edited with Philip N. Howard)—the first handbook to deal with the most significant scholarly debates in that field of study; and the book from my PhD research, Augmenting Democracy: Political Movements and Constitutional Reform During the Rise of Labour (Routledge). For more on my books, click here.

I founded and edit the Oxford University Press book series Studies in Digital Politics. Currently I serve on the editorial boards of the following journals, which are all Q1: Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, International Journal of Press/Politics, Political Communication, Communication Theory, and Social Media + Society.

My writing crosses disciplinary boundaries and has published in a wide range of scholarly journals, including the Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, Political Studies, Governance, Communication Theory, Political Communication, Social Media + Society, The International Journal of Press/Politics, the Lancet Public Health, Media, Culture & Society, American Behavioral Scientist, Psychological Medicine, Parliamentary Affairs, Journalism, and Information, Communication & Society. Awards for my journal writing include the American Political Science Association’s 2016 Walter Lippmann Award and its 2022 Paul Lazarsfeld Award, as well the Honourable Mention for the International Communication Association’s 2022 Kaid-Sanders Award and its 2019 Wolfgang Donsbach Award. You can download many of my articles here.

I’ve been conferred the Fellowship of the Academy of Social Sciences, elected a Fellow of the RSA, and I’m listed in the Stanford University/Elsevier Top 2% of Scientists Worldwide, 1960-2020. In 2013–14 I served (unpaid) as one of the original eight Commissioners on the inaugural Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement. In 2019 I became an adviser (unpaid) to Clean up the Internet, an independent organisation tackling the degradation of online discourse and its implications for democracy. From 2020 to early 2022 I served as an adviser to the Department of Digital, Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) Counter-Disinformation Policy Forum and the DCMS/Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Digital Markets Research Working Group. Over the years, I have made a few broadcast media appearances, including a couple on BBC Radio Four’s Thinking Allowed, and on The Moral Maze, The World at One, and Sky News. Occasionally, I’ve written for the British and U.S. press, including The Independent, the Washington Post, and The Conversation. News organizations in the UK, Finland, Italy, Japan, Norway, Portugal, and Spain, among other countries, have covered my research, including in outlets such as The Times, BBC News, the Washington Post, ITV News, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, CNN, the Independent, Bloomberg News, the Telegraph, the New Scientist, First Draft, Campaign, New Statesman, and Stylist.

I’ve had the good fortune to present my research at many scholarly meetings in the United Kingdom and in twenty-six different cities outside the United Kingdom, including keynote speeches in Canada, Estonia, Finland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom, and invited lectures in Austria, Canada, Italy, Norway, Spain, the United States, at many universities across Britain, and at other public institutions including the Parliament of Canada, the UK Parliament, the UK Cabinet Office, the US Congressional Research Service, the RSA, the US Embassy in London, the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), Gresham College, the Cheltenham Science Festival, the Institute of Historical Research, the European Parliament Information Office, the UK Labour Party, and Policy Network.

After growing up in the north east of England, I completed my undergraduate degree in political science at the University of Birmingham, earning First Class Honours. I then moved to the London School of Economics, where I earned a Masters (with Distinction) in Government, funded by the ESRC. I remained at the LSE to research and earn my PhD (also funded by the ESRC) in the Department of Government under the supervision of Professor Rodney Barker. My doctoral dissertation was published as my first book—a study of the discourses and communication forms of British liberal, socialist, and feminist movements for democratic reform during the early twentieth century. Titled Augmenting Democracy: Political Movements and Constitutional Reform During the Rise of Labour, the book originally published in 1999 and was re-released in 2018 as part of the Routledge Revivals series.

After my PhD, my work turned to explaining the role of the internet in reshaping social and political life, and this has been my fascination for the last twenty-four years. For further details, please see my books page, my articles page, and my book series page.

Before I joined Loughborough in 2017, I researched and taught at Royal Holloway, University of London, joining as a Lecturer in the interdisciplinary Department of Social and Political Science in 2001. From 2006 to 2009 I served as Head of the new Department of Politics and International Relations at Royal Holloway and led its rapid expansion (which saw it more than double in size during those three years) and laid the foundations of its research centre strategy and emergence as a new centre of excellence in research and teaching. I was awarded a Chair as Professor of Political Science in 2008 and I founded and directed Royal Holloway's New Political Communication Unit from 2007 to 2017. Visiting Fellowships include one at the Oxford Internet Institute and one at the American Political Science Association Centennial Centre, Washington, DC.

In 2017 I was appointed to an Excellence 100 Professorship in the Department of Communication and Media at Loughborough University. At the time, the Times Higher featured me in a profile article.

I’m #firstgen.

Disclosure and Integrity Statement

Funding Over the Last Five Years
Leverhulme Trust
Loughborough University Adventure Research Programme
Loughborough University Communication and Culture Beacon
Swiss National Science Foundation
University of Oxford Covid-19 Research Response Fund

Advisory Roles Over the Last Five Years (does not include peer reviewing)
UK Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (unpaid)
Clean Up The Internet (unpaid)
UK Cabinet Office (unpaid)
UK Research and Innovation (unpaid)
UK Economic and Social Research Council (unpaid).

Paid Professional Roles
As the Series Editor for the book series Oxford Studies in Digital Politics (Oxford University Press) I receive a small signing fee from Oxford University Press for each contracted title and a small royalty payment for each book sale. Books are published on the basis of their research quality i.e. the payments I receive are not quota-based or dependent on the publication of a minimum number of new titles per year.