As debates over digital platforms, misinformation, and online extremism intensify, recent work by Pitt Communication alumni is helping clarify how these technologies shape human agency. Alumni Dr. Reed Van Schenck (PhD ’24) and Dr. E. Chebrolu (PhD ’23) contribute key scholarship to a new Lateral collection on digital platforms and agency, with Dr. Van Schenck serving as co‑editor. The volume emerged from collaborations within the Cultural Studies Association and draws on research both scholars developed during their graduate training at Pitt—work that continues to inform conversations about media, politics, and the digital public sphere.
Dr. Reed Van Schenck, now an assistant professor of Communication and Media at the renowned Spanish IE University in Madrid, earned both an MA and PhD in Communication from the University of Pittsburgh. The collection of essays was edited by Dr. Van Schenck. The idea for this collection grew out of discussions at the 2022 Cultural Studies Association Conference, specifically within the research working group on new media and digital cultures. As members of the group explored digital media, internet culture, and misinformation, they noted shared themes. Dr. Van Schenck and co-editor Dr. Elaine Venter of Kennesaw State University initiated a project that would highlight these connections.
From 2019 to 2024, Dr. Van Schenck completed their graduate studies in our department culminating in their dissertation titled The Reactionary Web. The project traced alt-right white supremacist networks and their circulation in mainstream media. This dissertation forms the foundation of a forthcoming book on far-right extremism online. This line of research also helped spark the collaboration with Dr. Venter.
"I tend to be a Debbie Downer about the internet and its consequences on the public sphere," Dr. Van Schenck explains, “while [Dr. Venter’s] work focuses more on the positive and on the ways digital communication brings cultures and communities together.”
Dr. E. Chebrolu, now an assistant professor of Rhetorical Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earned a PhD in Communication at the University of Pittsburgh in 2023. His dissertation titled Modular Whiteness that examined the unfolding of white nationalist rhetoric on imageboard 4chan, won the Gerald R. Miller Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award in 2024.
Dr. Chebrolu’s contribution, Mind the Gab: A Racial Rhetorical Criticism of an “Alt-Tech” Complaint Against “Big Tech” Content Moderation, looks at the use of race in branding rhetoric of the “free speech company” Gab AI Inc., and its promotions found on X/Twitter. The article examines how conservative anxieties regarding content moderation led to the creation of alternative platforms such as Gab.
Digital Platforms and Agency is now available in the Lateral journal and features essays exploring human agency at the intersection of cultural and media studies.
Written by Giulia Siegfried for COMMRC Connect