Academic Studies of the Netroots
This panel is a roundtable discussion among academics who have recently produced books, dissertations, articles and conference papers on the Netroots and blogosphere. It seeks to ground discussions of the Netroots and blogosphere in solid theoretical foundations supported by extensive research. This panel will take meta to a whole new level of rigor.
Matthew Kerbel is professor of political science at Villanova University. Over the past two decades he has written extensively about the relationship between television and politics, a subject that first caught his interest when he worked as a television newswriter for public broadcasting. His books on the subject include Remote and Controlled: Media Politics in a Cynical Age and If It Bleeds, It Leads: An Anatomy of Television News, which explores the impacts of television on the political process. In Netroots, his seventh book, Kerbel considers the possibility that Internet politics will rekindle the relationship between politicians and ordinary people that was largely lost in the television age.
Dave Karpf is an Assistant Professor of Political Communication at Rutgers University, and also a Visiting Fellow at the Yale Information Society Project. He is the author of several articles on the political netroots, including "Macaca Moments Reconsidered," "Online Political Mobilization from the Advocacy Group's Perspective," and "Understanding Blogspace." His book,"Unexpected Transformations: The Internet's Effect on American Political Associations," will be published in 2012. His work can be found at blogosphereauthorityindex.com and davidkarpf.com. He blogs at shoutingloudly.com.
Dave is also a longtime environmental leader, having served as National Director of the Sierra Student Coalition in 1999-2000 and as a member of the Sierra Club Board of Directors from 2004 through 2010.
Antoinette Pole is an Assistant Professor of Political Science & Law at Montclair State University. After receiving her Ph.D. in Political Science from CUNY Graduate School and University Center, she was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University. Her areas of expertise include information technology and politics, and state politics. Recently, she has written a book titled Blogging the Political: Politics and Participation in a Networked Society (Routledge forthcoming) and she has been interviewed by media ranging the Boston Globe to the Chicago Tribune for her cutting edge work on political blogs.
