I’m Jesse Baldwin-Philippi, and am an associate professor at Fordham University, in the Communication and Media Studies Department. I am the graduate director for our Master’s program in Public Media, and am affiliated with the program in New Media and Digital Design.  My research interests center around issues of digital political participation, citizenship, and democracy, and my work has focused on the study of political campaigns as well as the innovation efforts of municipal governments. I teach about and research political communication and civic media, and am interested in how citizens’ engagement with new technologies can restructure forms of political participation and ideas about citizenship. Most of my work concerns the practices of digital political campaigning.

I’m currently working on a book and data campaigning: how it works on the ground, how it’s publicized my journalists and campaign staffers, and the points of divergence between those two worlds. It builds on my first book, Using Technology, Building Democracy: Digital Campaigning and the Construction of Citizenship which detailed how political campaigns’ engagement with digital media shapes practices of political participation and influences public understandings, expectations, and ideals of participatory citizenship.

I’ve also been involved in a series of research projects involving civic media tools and their capacity to foster particular civic and participatory skills. I previously worked at Emerson College and was affiliated with the Engagement Lab, often working with the City of Boston’s Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, including studies on 311 apps and the development of StreetCred and the Habit@ project, which are now part of the vast civic tech graveyard (RIP).

Ultimately, I approach my research with the goal of impacting tech policy and politics, in addition to advancing academic discussions.