twitter: @jameswilldennis

Senior Lecturer in Political Communication and Journalism at the University of Portsmouth. My research interests lie in political communication, with a particular focus on social media, political participation and citizenship, and digital news. My work has been published in the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, and Political Studies. My first monograph, Beyond Slacktivism: Political Participation on Social Media, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2018. This builds on my PhD research, for which I was awarded the American Political Science Association Information Technology and Politics Section Best Dissertation Award. As of July 2018, I am a Co-Convenor of the Political Studies Association Media and Politics Group.

I have experience of working with industry, carrying out social media research with the BBC World Service and the British Council. I have been a guest contributor for openDemocracy and the Political Studies Association blog, and I have been interviewed about digital politics on BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio Solent, and Inter TV.

What I'm up to (October 2019):

• My first monograph, Beyond Slacktivism: Political Participation on Social Media, was recently published by Palgrave Macmillan (Interest Groups, Advocacy and Democracy Series).

• From January 2020, I will be on sabbatical. Drawing on the University of Portsmouth Themes Research and Innovation Fund (TRIF) Strategic Fellowship, I will start a new project that explores how young people in areas of social deprivation in England use digital media to consume news and participate in politics.

• Following the Understanding and Examining the Digital Advocacy Pioneers workshop in September 2018, Nina Hall (Johns Hopkins University) and I are editing a special issue of the Journal of Information Technology and Politics. This is due to be published in January 2020.

• Examining how #GE2017 was reported to younger audiences by BuzzFeed and VICE with Susana Sampaio-Dias (University of Portsmouth) and Milan Kreuschitz-Markovič (University of Portsmouth). We will be presenting this research at the Political Studies Association Media and Politics Group conference in December at the University of Leeds.

• Working on a project on Momentum, the political activist group founded in the wake of Jeremy Corbyn’s rise to leader of the Labour Party. I presented work from this project at the annual conference of the Political Studies Association in April.

• Organising the Media and Politics Group panels at the Political Studies Association Conference in Edinburgh (April 6-8, 2020). The call for papers is available here.