New Publication: Megachurch Post-COVID Lockdown Videos on Facebook

I’m excited to share my article recently published in the Journal of Religion, Media and Digital Culture: Fear Not, for I Am with You Again (Socially Distanced): A Qualitative Thematic Analysis of Megachurch Post-covid Lockdown Re-opening Videos on Facebook. My research is featured in the Volume 11, Issue 3 of 2022, just available this week

Using a qualitative thematic analysis, I explore the socially mediated video communication of large churches intended to inform and promote their re-opening after closures during the initial lockdown phase of the covid-19 pandemic in Spring 2020. Specifically, the study seeks to understand the nature and motivation of the visual and scripted messages churches used to address congregational fear and anxiety about the risks of contracting the illness from attending in-person worship services, something entirely new to the modern church experience. The inductive analysis is sensitized by the extended parallel processing model, ritual communication theory, and the concept of security theater.

You can read this peer-reviewed article on the publication web site. if you have institutional access, or the pre-press accepted manuscript from my site.

New Publication: More on Facebook/Meta

I’m excited to share my article recently published in Artifact Analysis: “Not a Foregone Conclusion: The Early History of Facebook’s Political Economy of Social Media.” My research will be featured in the Winter issue in March. 

Using historical methods of analysis, I explore Zuckerberg’s public statements, artifacts, and documents for the first indications of Facebook’s embrace of a commercial model—specifically, the earliest indications that Zuckerberg believed the value of Facebook was rooted in advertising, as well as any evidence that he considered other fee-based or non-profit approaches. This research makes use of the digital archive of Mark Zuckerberg’s public utterances, The Zuckerberg Files, housed within the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Digital Commons website.

You can read the preprint on ResarchGate.