Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Media, Law & Policy
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Media, Law & Policy

VPA’s Phillips Co-Authors New Book on Navigating Polluted Information

Friday, May 15, 2020, By Erica Blust
Share

Whitney Phillips, assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, has published a new book online (open access) with co-author Ryan M. Milner. “You Are Here: A Field Guide for Navigating Polluted Information” (MIT Press) offers strategies for navigating increasingly treacherous information flows. Using ecological metaphors, the authors emphasize how our individual me is entwined within a much larger we, and how everyone fits within an ever-shifting network map.

Whitney Phillips

Philips and Milner describe how our poisoned media landscape came into being, beginning with the Satanic Panics of the 1980s and 1990s—which, they say, exemplify “network climate change”—and proceeding through the emergence of trolling culture and the rise of the reactionary far right (as well as its amplification by journalists) during and after the 2016 election. They explore the history of conspiracy theories in the United States, focusing on those concerning the Deep State; explain why old media literacy solutions fail to solve new media literacy problems; and suggest how we can navigate the network crisis more thoughtfully, effectively and ethically.

Phillips is the author of 2015’s “This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture” (MIT Press), which was awarded the Association of Internet Researchers’ Nancy Baym Best Book Award. In 2017, she published “The Ambivalent Internet: Mischief, Oddity,and Antagonism Online” (Polity Press), co-authored with Milner. She is also the author of the three-part ethnographic study “The Oxygen of Amplification: Better Practices for Reporting on Far Right Extremists, Antagonists and Manipulators” (Data & Society, 2018). She is currently an ideas columnist at WIRED magazine and has published dozens of popular press pieces on digital culture and ethics in outlets including The New York Times, The Atlantic and Slate.

Milner is associate professor of communication at the College of Charleston. He studies Internet culture—everything from funny GIFs to Twitter debates to large-scale propaganda campaigns. Throughout this work, he assesses how online interaction matters socially, politically and culturally. He is the author of “The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media” and has contributed commentary to outlets like TIME, Slate, The Los Angeles Review of Books, NBC News and The New York Times.

A hardcopy version of “You Are Here” will be published in 2021.

 

 

  • Author

Erica Blust

  • Recent
  • Syracuse University Press Participating in Path to Open Program
    Friday, September 29, 2023, By Cristina Hatem
  • A&S Chemistry Professor Receives Award From the American Chemical Society
    Friday, September 29, 2023, By News Staff
  • ‘Guys and Dolls’ opens Syracuse University Department of Drama 2023/24 Season
    Friday, September 29, 2023, By Joanna Penalva
  • Libraries Add MindSpa Wellness Rooms
    Friday, September 29, 2023, By Cristina Hatem
  • Syracuse University Announces the Opening of the Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy and Astrophysics
    Friday, September 29, 2023, By Kerrie Marshall

More In Media, Law & Policy

Maxwell Sociologists Receive $1.8M From the NIA to Study Midlife Health and Mortality

A team of Maxwell School faculty led by Jennifer Karas Montez and Shannon Monnat have been awarded a $1.8 million grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to support their research on geographic disparities in midlife mortality. Montez, University…

Languages Unlock Opportunities for English for Lawyers Alumna

Languages act as a guide for communicating our goals and dreams. It’s how we make sense of the world and connect with the communities around us. Become fluent in a variety of languages, and it’s like collecting keys that unlock…

Law Student Tyriese Robinson Named Inaugural Recipient of the NDNY FCBA Hon. Norman A. Mordue ’66, L’71 Law Scholarship

The first recipient of a scholarship established in honor of the Hon. Norman A. Mordue ’66, L’71 is second-year law student Tyriese Robinson. The Northern District of New York (NDNY) Federal Court Bar Association (FCBA) Hon. Norman A. Mordue ’66,…

Robertson Fellows Aspire to Serve as Foreign Service Officers

Interested in careers in the foreign service, Zoe Prin and Forrest Gatrell took advantage of internships and other opportunities as undergraduates that exposed them to the inner workings of government, policymaking and service from differing vantage points. While Gatrell obtained…

Craig M. Boise to Conclude Tenure as College of Law Dean at End of Academic Year

When Craig M. Boise stepped into his role as dean of the College of Law in the spring of 2016, he described his vision to create “a sustainable law school that leverages the knowledge, skill and imagination of its faculty…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • X
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • @SUCampus
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2023 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.