DIRECTORY LISTING

Biography

Ian Sheinheit

• B.A., Hofstra University
• PhD (expected), University of Albany, SUNY

I am a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University at Albany, SUNY, a doctoral fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University, and Lecturer at Lehman College, CUNY.

The crux of my research agenda is on voice and discourse in the public sphere and its hybrid media system. My focus is on the changes and impacts of digital communication technologies on politics, media, professionalism, journalism, and news content. Specifically, I analyze the ways in which different news media content producers, during particular historical and contemporary moments, report political events and wars, claim authority and legitimacy, construct reality, and impact political campaigns. This interdisciplinary research is at the nexus of media and cultural studies, digital media technologies, political sociology, communication theory, science and technology studies, and theories of deliberation and democracy. Methodologically, I combine a quantitative systematic content analysis, media event reconstruction, and a qualitative discourse, narrative, and textual analysis. Utilizing these methodological techniques, I have published in Sociological Forum, Mass Communication and Society, and PS: Political Science and Politics.

My passion for scholarship and my research is only surpassed by my passion to engage students with it. I have taught a wide variety of courses, ranging from research methods and statistics, to communication, politics, culture, and theory. In addition to teaching at Lehman College, I have taught at the University at Albany, SUNY, and at Hofstra University.