Summary
Benjamin Birkinbine is the director of Graduate Studies and an Associate Professor of Media Studies in the Reynolds School of Journalism and the Center for Advanced Media Studies. He also serves as vice-chair of the Political Economy Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research and is a faculty affiliate of the Cybersecurity Center.
Birkinbine comes to the Reynolds School from the University of Oregon, where he earned his doctorate in 2014. His research is rooted in the political economy of communication, with a specific focus on free and open-source software and the digital commons. Recently, he has been applying network analysis techniques to the study of concentration in media industries.
He is the author of Incorporating the Digital Commons (Univ. of Westminster Press, 2020) and co-editor of Global Media Giants (Routledge, 2017). His research has been published in Media, Culture & Society, the International Journal of Communication, The Political Economy of Communication and the Journal of Peer Production among others.
In the Reynolds School, he teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses. At the undergraduate level, he teaches introductory courses to communication and media, First Amendment and society, and media economics among others. At the graduate level, he teaches a seminar on the future of journalism.
Education
- Ph.D. in Media Studies, University of Oregon
- M.A. in Media Theory & Research, Southern Illinois University - Carbondale
- B.A. in Communication, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay