Brian Creech studies various cultural dimensions of American journalism, including its complicated relationship with the technology industries, journalism’s role as a mode of public discourse, journalism education, and visions of journalism’s future. He is the author or coauthor of more than 30 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, as well as the book Journalism Education for the Digital Age: Promises, Perils, Possibilities (Routledge, 2021).
Brian Creech
Chair
Professor
610.758.4179
brc623@lehigh.edu
209 Coppee Hall
Education:
Ph.D., Mass Communication, University of Georgia, 2013;
M.A., Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia, 2010;
B.A., English, Davidson College, 2005.
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Research Areas
Additional Interests
- Newswork and labor
- Media history
- Critical discourse analysis
- Metajournalistic discourse
- Critical and cultural theory
Research Statement
Biography
Brian Creech is Professor and Chair in the Department of Journalism and Communication at Lehigh University. His research interests include the critical study of journalism and technology industries, history of technology in journalism, global war and conflict reporting, journalism education, and visions of journalism’s future. Recent articles have appeared in Media, Culture and Society; Journalism: Theory, Practice, and Criticism; the International Journal of Cultural Studies; and New Media & Society. His most recent book, Journalism Education for the Digital Age (Routledge, 2021), looks at post-2008 debates about journalism education to understand how a mix of public ideals, market logics and industry concerns have come to animate discussions about digital journalism education and journalism’s future, especially how academic cultures have been framed as obstacles to attaining that future.
His current research projects look at the complicated relationship between the journalism and technology industries, focusing both on reporting about the tech industry and tech industry leaders, as well as the various ways the tech industry exerts influence over journalism's professional culture. His research has won top paper awards from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, as well as the 2020 Mouton D’Or Article of the Year award from the journal Semiotica for his article “Exploring the politics of visibility: Technology, digital representation, and the mediated workings of power.”
Prior to joining Lehigh, he was on faculty at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he most recently served as associate dean for research and graduate studies in the Lew Klein College of Media and Communication. He also served as director of the college's Media and Communication doctoral program and director of the journalism department's hyperlocal multimedia journalism capstone, PhiladelphiaNeighborhoods.com, which received a education development grant from the William Randolph Hearst Foundation and won a 2019 Editor & Publisher EPPY award for Best Relaunch and Redesign during his tenure. Dr. Creech also received Temple University’s 2015 junior faculty teaching award and an 2021 Teaching News Terrifically Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. He holds a Ph.D. in mass communication from the University of Georgia.
Book
Brian Creech (2021). Journalism Education for the Digital Age: Promises, Perils, Possibilities. New York: Routledge.
Peer-reviewed journal articles
Brian Creech (2024). Venture philanthropy, local news, and the murky promise of innovation. Media and Communication 12(1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.7496.
Brian Creech and Jessica Maddox (2022). Thus spoke Zuckerberg: Journalistic discourse, executive personae, and the personalization of tech industry power. New Media & Society. (Online ahead of print). DOI: 10.1177/14614448221116344
Brian Creech and Jessica Maddox (2022). Of essential workers and working from home: Journalistic discourses and the precarities of a pandemic economy. Journalism, 23(12): 2533–2551.
Jessica Maddox and Brian Creech (2022). Leaning in, pushed out: Postfeminist precarity, pandemic labor, and journalistic discourse. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 25(2): 174-191.
Brian Creech and Perry Parks (2022). Promises granted: Venture philanthropy and tech ideology in metajournalistic discourse. Journalism Studies. 23(1): 70-88.
Michael Buozis, Shannon Rooney, and Brian Creech (2021). Journalism’s institutional discourses in the pre-Internet era: Industry threats and persistent nostalgia at the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Journalism, 22(1): 69-85.
Jessica Maddox and Brian Creech (2021). Interrogating LeftTube: ContraPoints and the Possibilities of Critical Media Praxis on YouTube. Television and New Media 22(6): 595-615.
Brian Creech (2020). Exploring the politics of visibility: Technology, digital representation, and the mediated workings of power. Semiotica 236/237: pp.123-139.
*Winner of Semiotica’s 2020 Mouton D’Or Article of the Year Award.
Brian Creech (2020). Fake news and the discursive construction of technology companies’ social power. Media, Culture, and Society. 42(6): 952-968.
Dustin Greenwalt and Brian Creech (2020). Nostalgic environmentalities in the EPA’s Documerica and State of The Environment projects. Visual Communication, 19(4): 458-482.
Brian Creech (2020). Finding the white working class in 2016: Journalistic discourses and the construction of a political identity. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 23(2): 201-222.
Weimei Sun and Brian Creech (2019). Celebratory consumerism on China’s Singles’ Day: From grass roots holiday to commercial festival. Global Media and Communication, 15(2): 233-248.
Shannon Rooney and Brian Creech (2019). A digital baron for a digital age: Chris Hughes and neoliberalism's ascendancy in journalism. Digital Journalism, 7(6): 746-761.
Brian Creech and Amber Roessner (2019). Declaring the value of truth: Progressive-era lessons for combatting fake news. Journalism Practice, 13(3): 263-279.
Brian Creech and Anthony Nadler. (2018) Post-industrial fog: Reconsidering innovation in visions of journalism’s future. Journalism, 19(2): 182-199.
Brian Creech. (2018). Bearing the cost to witness: The political economy of risk in contemporary conflict and war reporting. Media, Culture, & Society, 40(4): 567-583.
Michael Buozis and Brian Creech (2018). Reading news as narrative: A genre approach to journalism studies. Journalism Studies, 19(10): 1430-1446.
Brian Creech and Shannon Rooney (2017) “Death of The New Republic”: Discursive conflict between tech industry management and journalism’s cultural value. Journalism Studies, 18(11): 1363-1380.
Brian Creech (2017) A newsmaker’s tool: The 35mm camera and journalism’s material epistemology. Journalism, 18(9): 1125-1141.
Andrew Mendelson and Brian Creech (2016) “Make every frame count”: The practice of slow photojournalism and the work of David Burnett. Digital Journalism, 4(4): 512-529.
Brian Creech and Andrew Mendelson (2015) Imagining the journalist of the future: Technological visions of journalism education and newswork. The Communication Review, 18(2): 142-165.
Brian Creech (2015) Disciplines of truth: The “Arab Spring,” American journalistic practice, and the production of public knowledge. Journalism, 16(8): 1010-1026.
Brian Creech (2014) “Six foreigners among 101 dead”: Analyzing the journalistic discourses surrounding the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 11(4): 401-419.
Brian Creech (2014) Digital representation and Occupy Wall Street’s challenge to contemporary political subjectivity. Convergence, 20(4): 461-477.
Stephen McCreery and Brian Creech (2014) The journalistic value of emerging technologies: American wartime newsreels and press reaction during World War II. Journalism History, 40(3): 177-186.
Brian Creech (2014) Refugee status: Tracing the global flows of M.I.A. Communication Culture, and Critique 7(3): 267-282.
Brian Creech (2013) “The rising tide of war:” Cambodian bombings and the discourses of American military power in Time. The Communication Review, 16(4): 189-210.
Chapters in scholarly books
Andrew Mendelson and Brian Creech (2019) “’Make every frame count’: The practice of slow photojournalism and the work of David Burnett” in Megan Le Masurier (ed). (2018). Slow Journalism. Routledge, pp. 224-239.
Michael Buozis, Shannon Rooney, and Brian Creech (2018). C-SPAN and journalism. In Robert Browning, ed. The Year in C-SPAN Archives Research, Volume 4. Purdue University Press, pp. 173-199.
Brian Creech (2018). Postcolonial travel journalism and the new media. In Robert Clarke, ed. Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Travel Writing. Cambridge University Press, pp. 157-172.
Brian Creech and Anandam Kavoori (2016) Beyond the global/local divide: Toward a transcultural understanding of mediated subjectivity. In Lucia Kraemer and Kai Merten, eds. Postcolonial Studies Meets Media Studies: A Critical Encounter. Transcript Verlag, pp. 67-84.
Brian Creech (2014) The spectacle of past violence: Travel journalism and dark tourism. In Elfriede Fursich and Folker Hanusch, eds. Travel Journalism: Exploring Production, Impact and Culture. Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 249-266.
Invited essays in academic journals
Brian Creech and Jessica Maddox (2022). Having it all Despite a Pandemic? Journalistic discourses and post-feminist precarity in the pandemic economy. Media Report to Women. 50(1): 12-18.
Anandam Kavoori, Mark Lashley, and Brian Creech. (2017) Introduction to Voices for a New Vernacular: A forum on digital storytelling. International Journal of Communication 11: 1057-1060.
Brian Creech (2013) “A poststructuralist approach to theory and history: Toward a genealogical understanding of media texts and artifacts,” in “A measure of theory?: Three historians and one Foucaultian scholar consider the role of theory in journalism history.” American Journalism 30(2): 260-278.
White papers and policy reports
Brian Creech and Robert Bodle (2019). The View from Journalism’s Post-Crisis Generation:
Navigating Precarity and Opportunity in Philadelphia and Cincinnati. Philadelphia, PA: The University of Pennsylvania Centers for Media, Inequality, and Change and Media@Risk, https://www.asc.upenn.edu/sites/default/files/2020-11/Creech-Bodle_11%20%281%29.pdf
Book reviews
Brian Creech (2023) Review of Where Ideas Go to Die: The Fate of the Intellect in American Journalism. Michael McDevitt, New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Mass Communication and Society, 26(5): 902-904.
Brian Creech (2020) Review of A Short History of Disruptive Journalism Technologies: 1960-1990. Will Mari, New York, NY: Routledge, 2019. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 97(2): 538-540.
Brian Creech (2015) Review of Social Media: A Critical Introduction, Christian Fuchs, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2012. Democratic Communique, 26(2): 181-182.
Brian Creech (2015) Review of America’s Battle for Media Democracy: The Triumph of Corporate Libertarianism and the Future of Media Reform. Victor Pickard, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Journalism, 16(8): 1143-1144.
Teaching
JOUR 090 – First Year Seminar: Fake News and Democratic Society
JOUR 024– Visual Communication